e should sit up, oh no, not necessary at
all. She would hear him if he came, or he could let himself in. "But I
really do not expect him to-night. He has--business," she said, with
a smile, which the butler thought not at all like my lady. She was
not given to explanations in an ordinary way. She was very kind and
considerate; but she was always a great lady, and not expansive to her
servants. She smiled in a strange conciliatory way, as if begging him
to believe her, and explained, to make it all right. The butler was not
deceived. When was any butler ever deceived by such pretences? He knew
better,--he knew that something had happened. He told the company
downstairs that he made no doubt there had been a row, and most likely
about Master Geoff, and that they might make up their minds to see rare
changes. They were all making their comments upon this in the servants'
hall, while Lady Markland, standing at the window, looked out with a
sort of desperation, shaping the figure of Theo a hundred times in the
distance, scarcely able to restrain the impulse to go out and look for
him; saying to herself, no longer scornfully, but with the profoundest
tragic gravity, that he must come back, if only for his clothes! It
was a dim summer night, the sky veiled with clouds, and after midnight
fitfully lit by the gleam of a waning moon. She went from window to
window noiselessly, thinking that now one, now another, had the most
perfect command of the avenue; hearing a hundred sounds of footsteps,
even of distant wheels and horses' hoofs, which seemed to beat upon the
ground far off, and never came to anything; then when the dawn began to
be blue in the sky, threw herself upon her bed and hid her face, knowing
that all was over, and that he would come back no more.

Scarcely less was the consternation in the Warren when Theo, pale
and silent, wrapped in silence as in a cloak, making no reply to the
questions asked, ordering his old room to be made ready without any
explanation, came back to the already excited house. Dick and Chatty and
all their affairs were forgotten in the extraordinary new event. "Oh,
Theo, what has happened," Mrs. Warrender cried, "what has happened? Are
you not going home?"

"This is my home, I suppose," he said, "unless you have any objections,"
which closed her mouth. She thought there must have been a quarrel, and
that Lady Markland had resented Theo's treatment of Geoff, which his
mother immediately began