ing the boy."

"No, Theo. It is probably nurse he is calling. He sleeps so badly," she
said, with a broken voice, for the appeals to mamma came quicker, and
she felt as if the child was dragging at her very heart-strings.

"He would have slept better, had he been paid less attention to; but
don't let me keep you from your boy," he said, throwing down the book on
the table. She made an attempt at an appeal.

"Theo! please don't go away. I will run for a moment, and see what is
the matter."

"You can do what you please about that: but you are ruining the boy,"
said Warrender. And then he began to hum a tune, which showed that he
had reached a white heat of exasperation, and left the room. She sat
motionless till she heard the street door closed loudly. Her heart
seemed to stand still: yet was there, was it possible, a certain relief
in the sound? She stole upstairs noiselessly and into Geoff's room and
threw herself down by the bedside. "Oh, Geoff, what is the matter?" she
asked: though her heart had dragged her so, there was in her tone a
tender exasperation too.

"I can't sleep," the boy said, clinging to her, with his arms round her
neck.

"But you must try to sleep--for my sake. Don't toss about, but lie quite
still, that is far the best way."

"I did," said Geoff, "and said all the poetry I knew, and did the
multiplication table twice. I wanted you. I kept quiet as long as I
could--but I wanted you so."

"But you must not want me. You are too big to want your mother."

"I shall never be too big, I want you always," said Geoff, murmuring in
the dark, with his little arms clinging close round her neck.

"Oh, Geoff, my dearest boy! but for my sake you must content
yourself--for my sake."

"Was he angry?" the child asked, and in the cover of the darkness he
clenched his little hands and contracted his brows; all of which she
guessed, though she saw not.

"That is not a question to ask," she said. "You must never speak to me
so; and remember, Geoff,--they say I am spoiling you--I will never come
when you call me after to-night."

But Lady Markland's heart was very heavy as she went downstairs. She
had put her child away from her; and she sat alone in the large still
drawing-room all the evening, hearing the carriages come and go outside,
and hansoms dashing up which she hoped might be coming to her own door.
But Theo did not come back. This was one of many evenings which she
spent alone, in disgrace, not