She was seized with sudden alarm, with a wild desire to justify herself, and the sudden wrath with which a conscious culprit takes advantage of the suggestion that ill tongues alone or evil representations have come between her and those whom she has wronged. The child on his side took no notice of this. He had gone so much further; beyond the sphere in which there are accusations or defences--indeed he was too young for anything of the kind. "Mamma," he said clasping her arm, "I think I should like to go to school. Don't you think it would be better for me to go to school?" "To school!" she cried, "do you want to leave me, Geoff?" in a tone of sudden dismay. "They say a boy ought to go to school, and they say it's very jolly at Eton, and I'm very backward, don't you know--Warrender says so." "Geoff! he has never said it to me." "But if it is true, mamma! There is no difference between me and a girl staying at home: and there I should have other fellows to play with. You had better send me. I should like it." She gave him an anxious look, which Geoff did not lift his eyes to meet, then with a sigh, "If you think you would like it, Geoff. To be sure it is what would have to be sooner or later." Here she made a hurried breathless pause, as if her thoughts went quicker than she could follow. "But now it is July, and you could not go before Michaelmas," she said. Was she sorry he could not go at once, though she had exclaimed at the first suggestion that he wanted to leave her? Geoff was too young to ask himself this question, but there was a vague sensation in his mind of something like it, and of a mingled satisfaction and disappointment in his mother's tone. "Warrender says there are fellows who prepare you for Eton," the boy said, holding his breath hard that he might not betray himself. "He is sure to know somebody. Send me now." "You are very anxious to leave me," she cried in a tone of piteous excitement and misery. "Why, why should you wish it so much?" Then she paused and cried suddenly, "Is it Mr. Warrender who has put this in your mind?" "I don't know nothing about Warrender," said Geoff, blinking his eyes to keep the tears away. "I never spoke to Warrender. He said that when he was not thinking about me." And then she clasped her arms about him suddenly in a transport of pain and trouble and relief. "Oh, Geoff, Geoff," she cried, "why, why do you want to leave me?" The boy could not but sob, pressed closely against her, feeling her heart swell as his own was doing, but neither did he make any attempt to answer, nor did she look for any reply. CHAPTER XXXVII.