play." What he did, generally, was to resort to the stables
and talk with the coachman and Black, whose conversation was perhaps
not the best possible for the little lad, and who instructed him in
horse-racing and other subjects of the kind. When Theo went away,
Lady Markland would call for Geoff to walk down the avenue with her,
accompanying the tutor to the gate. And when he had been shaken hands
with and had taken his departure, then was to Geoff the best of the day.
His mother and he, when it was fine, strolled about the park together
for an hour, in something like the old confiding and equal friendship; a
pair of friends, though they were mother and son, and though Geoff was
but ten and she twenty-seven. That moment was old times come back, and
recalled what was already the golden age to Geoff, the time before
anything had happened. He did not say before his father died, for his
childish memory was acute enough to recollect that things had often been
far from happy then. But he remembered the halcyon days of the first
mourning; the complete peace; the gradual relaxation of his mother's
face; the return of her dimples, and of her laughter. It had only been
then, he remembered, that he had called her "pretty mamma!" her face had
become so fresh, and so soft and round. But lately it had lengthened
a little again; and the eyes sometimes went miles off, which made him
uneasy. "Why do your eyes go so far away? do you see anything?" he
asked, sometimes; and then she would come back to him with a start,
perhaps with a flush of sudden colour, sometimes with a laugh, making
fun of it. But Geoff did not feel disposed to make fun of it. It gave
him a pang of anger to see her so; and unconsciously, without knowing
why, he was more indignant with Theo at these moments, than he was when
Theo sat at table and talked about matters beyond Geoff's ken. What had
Theo to do with that far-away look? What could he have to do with it?
Geoff could not tell; he was aware there was no sense in his anger, but
yet he was angry all the same.

And now, he sat waiting for Theo to come: waiting, but not wishing for
him. Geoff was not so clever as the maids and old Soames; he did not
know what he was afraid of. He had never formulated to himself any exact
danger; and naturally he knew nothing of the seductions of that way upon
which Warrender had been drawn without intending it; without meaning any
breach of Geoff's peace or of his own. Geoff did no