arily, and lost time and patience in jostling each other on
the stairs. If a stranger had entered the house that day, he might have
imagined that an unexpected disaster had happened in it, instead of an
unexpected necessity for a journey to London. Nothing proceeded in its
ordinary routine. Magdalen, who was accustomed to pass the morning at
the piano, wandered restlessly about the staircases and passages, and in
and out of doors when there were glimpses of fine weather. Norah, whose
fondness for reading had passed into a family proverb, took up book
after book from table and shelf, and laid them down again, in despair of
fixing her attention. Even Miss Garth felt the all-pervading influence
of the household disorganization, and sat alone by the morning-room
fire, with her head shaking ominously, and her work laid aside.

"Family affairs?" thought Miss Garth, pondering over Mrs. Vanstone's
vague explanatory words. "I have lived twelve years at Combe-Raven; and
these are the first family affairs which have got between the parents
and the children, in all my experience. What does it mean? Change? I
suppose I'm getting old. I don't like change."

CHAPTER II.

AT ten o'clock the next morning Norah and Magdalen stood alone in the
hall at Combe-Raven watching the departure of the carriage which took
their father and mother to the London train.

Up to the last moment, both the sisters had hoped for some explanation
of that mysterious "family business" to which Mrs. Vanstone had so
briefly alluded on the previous day. No such explanation had been
offered. Even the agitation of the leave-taking, under circumstances
entirely new in the home experience of the parents and children, had
not shaken the resolute discretion of Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone. They had
gone--with the warmest testimonies of affection, with farewell embraces
fervently reiterated again and again--but without dropping one word,
from first to last, of the nature of their errand.

As the grating sound of the carriage-wheels ceased suddenly at a turn in
the road, the sisters looked one another in the face; each feeling,
and each betraying in her own way, the dreary sense that she was openly
excluded, for the first time, from the confidence of her parents.
Norah's customary reserve strengthened into sullen silence--she sat down
in one of the hall chairs and looked out frowningly through the open
house door. Magdalen, as usual when her temper was ruffled, expresse