This statement was as a thunderbolt falling in the midst of them, and the poor woman perceived this instinctively. Her son's impatience had been the spark which set the smouldering fire in her alight, but even he was astounded by the quick and sudden blaze which lit up the dull wonder in his sisters' faces. And then he no longer thought of going to Oxford. He wanted to remain to see if he could do anything,--perhaps to be of use. A husband's uncle does not commend himself to one's mind as a very devoted or useful ministrant, and even he would go away, of course; and then a man who was nearer, who was a neighbour, who had already been so mixed up with the tragedy,--that was what he had been thinking of; not of Oxford, or his work. "It is not worth while going back to Oxford," he said; "the term is nearly over. One can read anywhere, at home as well as--I shall not go back at present." He was not accustomed yet to so abrupt a declaration of his sentiments, and for the moment he avoided his mother's eye. Minnie went back to her seat, and put down the bottle of salts on the table, with an indignant jar. "I am so glad that you feel so, Theo, _too_." Mrs. Warrender looked round upon her children with despairing eyes. They were all _his_ children,--all Warrenders born; knowing as little about her and her ways of thinking as if she had been a stranger to them. She was indeed a stranger to them in the intimate sense. The exasperation that had been in her mind for years could be repressed no longer. "If it is so," she said, "I don't wish to interfere with your plans, Theo; but I will go for--for a little change. I must have it. I am worn out." "Oh, mamma, you will not surely go by yourself, without us! How could you get on without us!" cried Chatty. She had perhaps, being the youngest, a faint stir of a feeling in her mind that a little change might be pleasant enough. But she took her mother at her word with this mild protest, which made Mrs. Warrender's impatient cry into a statement of fixed resolution: and the others said nothing. Warrender was silent, because he was absorbed in the new thoughts that filled his mind; Minnie, because, like Chatty, she felt quite apart from any such extraordinary wishes, having nothing to do with it, and nothing to say. "It will be very strange, certainly, for me to be alone,--very strange," Mrs. Warrender said, with a quiver in her voice. "It is so long since I have done anything by myself; not since before you were all born. But if it must be," she added, "I must just take courage as well as I can, and--go by myself, as you say."