lt away."

"He _is_ wise, Theo--you don't know how right you are. Oh, my boy! and I
am taking so little thought of him. I felt my heart leap when he asked
to go away. Can you believe it? My own boy, my only one! I was glad, and
I hate myself for it, though it was for you."

"All that," he said, eagerly addressing himself with all the arts he
knew to comfort and reassure her, "is this state of miserable delay. We
are in the transition from one to another. What good can we do to keep
hanging on, to keep the whole county in talk, to make Geoff unhappy? He
goes by instinct and he sees it--my own love, let us do so too. Let us
do it--without a word to any one, my dearest!"

"Oh, Theo," she cried, "if you will but promise me to love my boy."

In the distracted state in which she was, this no-argument of Geoff's
little example went to her heart. It seemed to bring him somehow into
the decision, to make it look like a concession to Geoff, a carrying out
of his wishes, and at the same time a supreme plea with Theo for love
and understanding of Geoff. Yet it was with falterings and sinkings of
soul indescribable that Lady Markland went through the two following
days. They were days wonderful, not to be ever forgotten. Theo did not
appear, he had gone away, she said, for a little while upon business,
and Geoff and she were left alone. They went back into all the old
habitudes as if nothing were changed; and the house fell again into a
strange calm, a quietness almost unnatural. There were no lessons, no
business, nothing to be done, but only an abandonment to that pleasure
of being together which had been so long broken. He went with her for
her drives, and she went with him for his walk. She called for Geoff
whenever he disappeared for a moment, as if she could not bear him away
from her side. They were as they had been before Theo existed for them,
when they were all in all to each other. Alas, they were, yet were not,
as they had been. When they drove through the fair country where the
sheaves were standing in the fields and everything aglow with the
mirth of harvest, they were both lost in long reveries, only calling
themselves back by intervals, with a recollection of the necessity of
saying something to each other. When they walked, though Geoff still
clung to his mother's arm, his thoughts as well as hers were away. They
discovered in this moment of close reunion that they had lost each
other. Not only did the mother no