e worse. The result was that within a
few weeks Theo Warrender had gone off with a burning sense of injury and
wrong, to travel he did not much care where, to forget himself he did
not much care how; and Lady Markland, feeling as if she had awakened
suddenly from a strange dream, a dream full of fever and unrest, of
fugitive happiness but lasting trouble, came to herself all alone
with the two little babies, in a strange solitude which was no longer
natural, and with Geoff. She had chosen, who could say wrongly?--and yet
in a way which set wrong all the circumstances of her life.

This was how for the moment her second venture came to an end. Theo
went forth upon the world for that Wanderyear in which so much of the
superfluous vigour of life is so often expended, which it would have
been so well for everybody he had taken before: and stormed about the
world for a time, no one knowing what volcanoes were exploding in his
soul. How much he gathered of better wisdom it is not within the limits
of this history to say.

The happy ones were Dick and Chatty, who began their life together as
if there had been no cloud upon it. He had fully lived out his Wanderyear,
and had paid dearly for the follies, which had been done with no evil
meaning on his part, but in all honour and good intention, bitterly
foolish though they were. And perhaps he never was very wise, nor
rose above the possibility of being taken in, which is a peculiarity
of many generous spirits. But why should we say they were the happy
ones? The really happy ones were Minnie and her Eustace, who never felt
themselves to be in the wrong, or were anything less than the regulators
of everybody's life and manners wherever they went. It was Mrs. Eustace
Thynne's conviction to the last that all the misfortunes which
temporarily befell her sister were owing to the fact that she herself
was not on the spot to regulate affairs; and that Theo, if he had taken
her advice, would never have placed himself in the way of the trouble
which had overwhelmed his life.

THE END.

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Country Gentleman and his Family, by
Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

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