venue. The news ran through the house in a moment. "My lady
has given him the sack." The old servants were glad, because there would
thus be no change; and the young ones were sorry for the same reason,
and partly, too, because of their sympathy for the young lover
dismissed, whose distracted departure without his horse went to their
tender hearts.

Geoff had to enter into an explanation as to why he had sought the stables
as soon as he was dismissed from his books,--an explanation which involved
much; for it had already been pointed out to him on various occasions
that the coachman and Black were not improving society. Geoff had to
confess that it was dull when he had a holiday, that he didn't know
where to go, that Black and the coachman were more fun than--any one
else--with an expressive glance over his shoulder at old Soames, all
which pleas went like so many arrows to Lady Markland's heart. Had she
been so neglecting her boy that Black and the coachman had become his
valued allies? She who believed in her heart that up to this moment her
life had been devoted to Geoff.

The day passed to her like a day in a fever. Geoff liked it, on the
whole. There was no Theo to linger after lunch and interfere with his
possession of his mother. The long afternoon was all his, and Lady
Markland, though she was, he thought, dull, and sometimes did not hear
what he said, letting her attention stray, and her eyes go far away,
over his head, was yet very tender, more affectionate than ever, anxious
to inquire into all his wishes and to find out everything he wanted. He
talked to her more than he had done at a stretch for a long time, and
made it so apparent how completely he calculated upon her as always his
companion that Lady Markland's guilty soul was troubled within her. She
faltered once, "But, Geoff, you know you will have to go to school, they
all say, and then to Oxford, when you are a man." "Yes, and you can come
and live close by college," the boy said. "Many boys' mothers do, Mr.
Sargent told me." Her heart sank more and more as he opened up his plans
before her. It was all quite simple to Geoff. He did not dream of any
change in himself, and what change could ever come to her? Presently the
manner in which the child calculated upon her, ignoring every personal
claim of hers, awoke a little spark in Lady Markland's breast. A little
while ago she would herself have said (nay, this morning she would have
said it) that she