e one. There were thus three parties in the house on the evening
of the first day of their changed existence: the mother, who was so
anxious to leave the scene of her past existence behind her; the girls,
who clung to their home; the brother, the master, who, half to show that
he took his mother's side, half out of instinctive assertion of himself,
had let them know roundly that their home was theirs no longer. He was
not proud of himself at all as he thought of what he had said; but yet
when he recalled it he was not perhaps so sorry for having said it as
he had been the minute after the words left his lips. It was better,
possibly, as the lawyer, as the mother, as everybody, had said, that the
true state of affairs should be fully understood from the first. The
house was theirs no longer. The old reign and all its traditions had
passed away; a new reign had begun. What that new reign might turn to,
who might share it, what wonderful developments it might take, who could
tell?

His imagination here went away with a leap into realms of sheer
romance. He seemed to see the old house transformed, the free air,
the sweet sunshine pouring in, the homely rooms made beautiful, the
inhabitants---- What was he thinking of? Did ever imagination go so fast
or so far? He stopped himself, with vague smiles stealing to his lips.
All that enchanted ground was so new to him that he had no control over
his fancy, but went to the utmost length with a leap of bewildering
pleasure and daring almost like a child. Yet mingled with this were
various elements which were not lovely. He was not, so far as had been
previously apparent, selfish beyond the natural liking for his own
comfort and his own way, which is almost universal. He had never wished
to cut himself off from his family, or to please himself at their
expense. But something had come into his mind which is nearer than the
nearest,--something which, with a new and uncomprehended fire, hardens
the heart on one side while melting it on the other, and brings
tenderness undreamed of and cruelty impossible to be believed, from the
same source. He felt the conflict of these powers within him when he was
left alone in the badly furnished, badly lighted drawing-room, which
seemed to reproach him for the retirement of those well-known figures
which had filled it with tranquil dulness for so many years, and never
wished it different. With something of the same feeling towards the
inanimate thi