A Country Gentleman and His Family

room and shut the door, and sat down where she had been sitting, and delivered herself over to those visions which are more enthralling than the reality; those mingled recollections and anticipations which are the elixir of love. She had forgotten all about herself; herself as she was before that last meeting. Her age, her gravity, the falseness of the position, the terrible Geoff, all floated away from her thoughts. They were filled only with what he had been saying and doing, as if she had been that “fresh girl” of whom she had spoken to him. She forgot that she was not that girl. She forgot that she was four years (magnified this morning into a hundred) and a whole life in advance of Theo. She thought only⁠—nay, poor lady, assailed after her time by this love-fever, taking it late and not lightly! she thought not at all, but surrendered herself to that overwhelming wave of emotion which, more than almost anything else, has the power of filling up all the vacant places of life. Her troublous thoughts, her shame, her sense of all the difficulties in her way, went from her in that new existence. They were all there unchanged, but for the moment she thought of them no more.

It was some time after this, when she went upstairs with her candle through the stilled and darkened house, the light in her hand showing still that confused sweet shining in her eyes, the smile that lurked about the corners of her mouth. A faint sound made her look up as she went towards the gallery upon which all the bedrooms opened. Standing by the banister, looking down into the dark hall, was Geoff, a little white figure, his colourless hair ruffled by much tossing on his bed, his eyes dazzled by the light. “Geoff!” She stood still and her heart seemed to stop beating. To see him there was as if a curtain had suddenly fallen, shutting out all the sweet prospects before her, showing nothing but darkness and danger instead.

“Geoff! Is it you out of bed at this hour?”

“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 her cheeks blazing with shame.

“It’s not anything wrong, mamma?”

“No, Geoff, oh no, my darling! they say not: if only you don’t mind.”

The brave little eyes blinked and twinkled to get rid of unwelcome tears. He put his hand upon her head and stroked it, as if it had been she that was the child. “I do mind,” he said. She thought, as she felt the little hand upon her head, that the boy was about to call upon her for a supreme sacrifice; but for a moment there was nothing more. Afterwards he repulsed her a little, very slightly, but yet it was a repulse. “I suppose,” he said, “it cannot be helped, mamma? My feet are quite warm now, and I’ll go to bed.”

“Geoff, is that all you have got to say to me? It can make no difference, my darling, no difference. Oh, Geoff, my own boy, you will always be my first⁠—”

Would he, could he be her first thought? She paused, conscience-stricken, raising for the first time her eyes to his. But a child does not catch such an unconscious admission. He took no