it was the uncertainty, the excitement of
suspense, and all that feverish commotion which sometimes arises in a
woman's mind when the romance of her life comes to a sudden pause and
silence follows the constant interchange of words and looks, and the
doubt whether anything more will ever follow, or whether the pause is to
be for ever, turns all the sweeter meditations into a whirl of confusion
and anxiety and shame. A mother is so near that the reflection of her
child's sentiments gets into her mind, but very often with such prismatic
changes, and oblique catchings of the light, that even sympathy goes
wrong. Mrs. Warrender thus caught from Chatty the representation of an
agitated soul in which there was all the sensitive shame of a love
that is given unsought, mingled with a tender indignation against the
offender who perhaps had never meant--But the mother on this point took
a different view, and there rose up in her mind on the moment, a hundred
cheerful, hopeful plans to bring him back and to set all right. Naturally
there was not a word said on the subject, which was far too delicate for
words; but this was how Mrs. Warrender followed, as she believed, with
an intensity which was full of tenderness, the current of her daughter's
thoughts.

And yet these were not Chatty's thoughts at all. If she felt any
excitement it was against those plans for cheering her, and the idea
that any little contrivances of society could ever take the place of
what was past--conjoined with a sort of jealousy of that past, lest any
one should interfere with it, or attempt to blur the perfect outline of
it as a thing which had been, and could be no more, nor any copy of
it. This was what the soul most near her own did not divine. They sat
together in the silence of the summer parlour, the cool sweet room full
of flowers, with the July sun shut out, but the warm air coming in, so
full of mutual love and sympathy, and yet with but so disturbed and
confused an apprehension each of each. After some time had passed thus,
without any disturbance, nothing but the softened sounds of morning
traffic in the quiet street, a slow cart passing, an occasional carriage,
the voices of the children just freed from school, there came the quick
sound of a horse's hoofs, a pause before the door, and then the bell
echoing into the silence of the house.

"That must be Theo," cried Mrs. Warrender. "I was sure he would come
to-day. Chatty, after luncheon, will