h, not like your father, who was good
and old and peaceful, who was just taken away gently, led away,--but so
young and so unprepared! Oh, so unprepared! What could God do with him,
cut off in the midst of----"

Minnie got up hastily, with her smelling-salts, which always lay on the
table. "Go and get her a glass of water, Theo," she said
authoritatively.

Mrs. Warrender laughed. It was a little nervous, but it was a laugh. It
seemed to peal through the house, which still was a house of mourning,
and filled the girls with a horror beyond words. She put out her hands
to put their ministrations away. "I do not want water," she said, "nor
salts either. I am not going into hysterics. Sit down and listen to me.
I cannot remain here. It is your birthplace, but not mine. I am dying
for fresh air and the sight of the sun. If you are shocked, I cannot
help it. Theo, when you go back to Oxford I will go to--I don't know
where; to some place where there is more air; but here I cannot stay."

This statement was as a thunderbolt falling in the midst of them, and
the poor woman perceived this instinctively. Her son's impatience had
been the spark which set the smouldering fire in her alight, but even he
was astounded by the quick and sudden blaze which lit up the dull wonder
in his sisters' faces. And then he no longer thought of going to Oxford.
He wanted to remain to see if he could do anything,--perhaps to be of
use. A husband's uncle does not commend himself to one's mind as a very
devoted or useful ministrant, and even he would go away, of course; and
then a man who was nearer, who was a neighbour, who had already been so
mixed up with the tragedy,--that was what he had been thinking of; not
of Oxford, or his work.

"It is not worth while going back to Oxford," he said; "the term is
nearly over. One can read anywhere, at home as well as--I shall not go
back at present." He was not accustomed yet to so abrupt a declaration
of his sentiments, and for the moment he avoided his mother's eye.

Minnie went back to her seat, and put down the bottle of salts on the
table, with an indignant jar. "I am so glad that you feel so, Theo,
_too_."

Mrs. Warrender looked round upon her children with despairing eyes. They
were all _his_ children,--all Warrenders born; knowing as little about
her and her ways of thinking as if she had been a stranger to them. She
was indeed a stranger to them in the intimate sense. The exasperation
that had