dren, more awed still, crept out of the
room.

Ursula even, alarmed, looked in his face as if for the first time she
could not comprehend her husband.

"John, you should forgive poor Guy! he did not intend any harm."

"No--no."

"And he is so very miserable. Never before did he fail in his duty to
you."

"But what if I have failed in mine to him?--What if--you used to say I
could not understand Guy--what if I have come short towards him? I,
that am accountable to God for every one of my children."

"John--John"--she knelt down and put her arms round his neck. "Husband,
do not look unhappy. I did not mean to blame you--we may be wrong,
both of us--all of us. But we will not be afraid. We know Who pities
us, even as we pity our children."

Thus she spoke, and more to the same purport; but it was a long time
before her words brought any consolation. Then the parents talked
together, trying to arrange some plan whereby Guy's mind might be
occupied and soothed, or else Edwin removed out of his sight for a
little while. Once I hinted at the advantage of Guy's leaving home;
but Mrs. Halifax seemed to shrink from this project as though it were a
foreboding of perpetual exile.

"No, no; anything but that. Beside, Guy would not wish it. He has
never left me in his life. His going would seem like the general
breaking up of the family."

Alas! she did not, would not see that the family was already "broken."
Broken, more than either absence, marriage, or death itself could have
effected.

One thing more we had to consider--a thing at once natural and right in
any family, namely, how to hide its wounds from the chattering,
scandalous world. And so, when by a happy chance there came over that
morning our good friend Lady Oldtower and her carriage full of
daughters, Mrs. Halifax communicated, with a simple dignity that
quelled all comment, the fact of "my son Edwin's engagement," and
accepted the invitation for Maud and Miss Silver, which was willingly
repeated and pressed.

One thing I noticed, that in speaking of or to the girl who in a single
day from merely the governess had become, and was sedulously treated
as, our own, Mrs. Halifax invariably called her, as heretofore, "Miss
Silver," or "my dear;" never by any chance "Louise," or "Mademoiselle
D'Argent."

Before she left Beechwood, Edwin came in and hurriedly spoke to his
mother. What he said was evidently painful to both.

"I am not aware of it, Ed