's cut was,
dimly realising that it might have been in his own head but for Theo.
"Was that what it was?" he said, wondering and unobserved in the midst
of the new commotion, which for the moment left Geoff altogether, and
rose around Warrender, as if he had been the hero of the day.

CHAPTER XXIII.

They all sat round the table and took their evening meal together before
Lady Markland went back. It was not a ceremonious, grand dinner, as if
there had been a party. Old Joseph pottered about, and put the dishes
on the table, and handed the potatoes now and then when they were not
wanted, and sometimes leaned across between the young ladies to regulate
the lamp, explaining why as he did so. "Excuse me, Miss Chatty, but it's
a-going to smoke," he said; and in the meantime the family helped each
other. But Lady Markland was not conscious of the defects in the service.
She sat by Theo's side, talking to him, looking at him in a kind of soft
ecstasy. They had been friends before, but it seemed that she had now
for the first time discovered what he was, and could not conceal her
pleasure, her gratitude, her admiration. She made him tell her how it
all happened, a dozen times over, while the others talked of other
things, and poured out her thanks, her happiness, her ascriptions of
praise, as if he had been more than mortal, devoting herself to him
alone. Lady Markland had never been the kind of woman who allows herself
in society to be engrossed by a man. It was entirely unlike her, unlike
her character, a new thing. She was quite unconscious of Minnie's sharp
eyes upon her, of the remarks which were being made. All she was aware
of, in that rapture of safety after danger and relief from pain, was
Geoff, blinking with eyes half sleepy, half excited, by the side of Mrs.
Warrender, nothing hurt in him but his knickerbockers; and the young man
by her side, with the wound upon his head, who had saved her child's
life. Theo, for his part, was wrapped in a mist of delight for which
there was no name. He saw only her, thought only of her; and for the
first time began to imagine what life might be if it should ever come to
mean a state in which this rapture should be permanent,--when she would
always look at him so, always devote herself, eyes and lips and all her
being, to make him happy.

The room lay in darkness beyond the steady light of the white lamp,
shining on the circle of faces. There was not much conversation. Min