r for me
to go to school?"

"To school!" she cried, "do you want to leave me, Geoff?" in a tone of
sudden dismay.

"They say a boy ought to go to school, and they say it's very jolly at
Eton, and I'm very backward, don't you know--Warrender says so."

"Geoff! he has never said it to me."

"But if it is true, mamma! There is no difference between me and a girl
staying at home: and there I should have other fellows to play with. You
had better send me. I should like it."

She gave him an anxious look, which Geoff did not lift his eyes to meet,
then with a sigh, "If you think you would like it, Geoff. To be sure
it is what would have to be sooner or later." Here she made a hurried
breathless pause, as if her thoughts went quicker than she could follow.
"But now it is July, and you could not go before Michaelmas," she said.

Was she sorry he could not go at once, though she had exclaimed at the
first suggestion that he wanted to leave her? Geoff was too young to ask
himself this question, but there was a vague sensation in his mind of
something like it, and of a mingled satisfaction and disappointment in
his mother's tone.

"Warrender says there are fellows who prepare you for Eton," the boy
said, holding his breath hard that he might not betray himself. "He is
sure to know somebody. Send me now."

"You are very anxious to leave me," she cried in a tone of piteous
excitement and misery. "Why, why should you wish it so much?" Then she
paused and cried suddenly, "Is it Mr. Warrender who has put this in your
mind?"

"I don't know nothing about Warrender," said Geoff, blinking his eyes to
keep the tears away. "I never spoke to Warrender. He said that when he
was not thinking about me."

And then she clasped her arms about him suddenly in a transport of pain
and trouble and relief. "Oh, Geoff, Geoff," she cried, "why, why do you
want to leave me?" The boy could not but sob, pressed closely against
her, feeling her heart swell as his own was doing, but neither did he
make any attempt to answer, nor did she look for any reply.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Various scenes to which Markland was all unaccustomed had been taking
place in these days, alternations of rapture and gloom on the part of
Warrender, of shrinking and eagerness on the part of Lady Markland,
which made their intercourse one of perpetual vicissitude. From the
quiet of her seclusion she had been roused into all the storms of
passion, and though this wa