"Yes, it is me," he said, in a querulous tone; "there is no one else so
little in the house; of course it is me."

"You are shivering with cold; have you----" Her breath seemed to go from
her as she came up to him and put her arm round him. "Have you been here
long, Geoff?"

"I couldn't sleep," said the child, "and I heard a noise. I saw Theo. Has
Theo been back here with you? What did Theo want here so late at night?"

He did not look at her, but stared into the candle with eyes opened to
twice their size.

"Come into my room," she said. "You are so cold; you are shivering. Oh,
Geoff! if you make yourself ill, what shall I do?"

He let her lead him into her room, wrap him in a fur cloak, and kneel
down beside him to chafe his feet with her hands; this helped her in the
dreadful crisis which had come so suddenly, which she had feared beyond
anything else in the world. "You must have been about a long time or you
could not have got so cold, Geoff."

"Yes, I have been about a long time. I thought you would come up directly,
after Theo went away." He looked at her very gravely as she knelt
with her face on a level with his. He had filled the place of a judge
before, without knowing it; but now Geoff was consciously a judge, and
interrogating--one who was too much like a criminal, who avoided the
looks of that representative of offended law. "Theo stayed a long time,"
he said, "and then he rode away. I suppose he came to get his horse."
How he looked at her! Her eyes were upon his feet, stretched out on the
sofa, which she was rubbing; but his eyes burned into her, through her
downcast eyelids, making punctures in her very brain.

"He did come for his horse." She could hardly hear the words she was
saying, for the tumult of her heart in her ears; "but that was not all,
Geoff."

For a long minute no more was said; it seemed like an hour. The mother
went on rubbing the child's feet mechanically, then bent down upon them
and kissed them. No Magdalen was ever more bowed with shame and trouble.
Her voice was choked; she could not speak a word in her own defence. It
had been happiness, but oh, what a price to pay!

At last Geoff said, with great gravity, "Theo was always very fond of
you."

"I think so, Geoff," she answered, faltering.

"And now you are fond of him."

She could say nothing. She put her head down upon the little white feet
and kissed them, with what humility, with what compunction! her eyes dry
and