him, his head knocking against every obstacle; and she saw him lying by
the roadside, white and lifeless. She saw everything that could and
could not happen, and accused herself for not having sent him to school,
out of danger,--for not having kept him by her side night and day.

Mr. Longstaffe naturally looked on at all this anguish with a mixture
of contempt and pity. He was not at all alarmed for Geoff. "The young
gentleman will have gone to visit one of his friends; he will have gone
farther than he intended. He may, if he doesn't know the country very
well, have missed his way: but we don't live in a country of brigands
and bandits, my dear lady; somebody will be sure to direct him safely
back." He managed to eat his luncheon by himself, after she had begged
him not to mind her absence, and had left him undisturbed to confide to
the butler his regret that Lady Markland should be so much upset, and
his conviction that the little boy was quite safe. "He'll be all right,
sir," the butler said. "He is as sharp as a needle, is Mr. Geoff. I did
ought to say his little lordship, but it's hard to get into new ways."
They said this, each with an indulgent smile at her weakness, in Lady
Markland's absence. The lawyer had a great respect for her, and the
butler venerated his mistress who was very capable in her own house, but
they smiled at her womanish exaggeration, all the same.

Warrender had been quite right in thinking she would come at once for
Geoff. She had almost harnessed the horses herself, so eager was she,
and they flew along the country roads at a pace very unlike their
ordinary calm. Evening had fallen when she rushed into the hall at the
Warren, in her garden hat, with a shawl wrapped about her shoulders, the
first she had found. Terrible recollections of the former occasion when
she had been summoned to this house were in her mind, and it was with
a fantastic terror which she could scarcely overcome that she found
herself once more, by the same waning light, in the place where she had
been sent for to see her husband die. If she had been deceived. If the
child should be gone, like his father! She had not, however, a second
moment in which to indulge this panic, for Geoff's voice, somewhat
raised, met her ears at once. Geoff was in very great feather, seated
among the ladies, expounding to them his views on things in general.
"Our trees at Markland are not like your trees," he was saying. "They
are just as y