It was about this time that she began to notice a rather remarkable change in Isabel. From being the most outspoken member of the family, the younger sister had developed a degree of reticence which was second only to Will’s churlishness, though Dorothy fancied it was sorrowful rather than sullen. From day to day she spent less time at her easel, and twice Dorothy had come upon her when her eyes were red with weeping. To inquiry, jesting or solicitous, she was stonily impervious, and when the thing became unbearable Dorothy went to her mother again, meaning to be at the heart of things if persistence could find the way. She chose her time cunningly, attacking after her mother had gone to bed, so there would be no chance of retreat. “How should I know, dear?” was the mother’s reply to her first question about Isabel. “I haven’t noticed anything wrong with her.” “But there _is_ something wrong,” Dorothy insisted. “She hasn’t been like herself for days. She mopes, and she doesn’t paint; and twice I have caught her crying, though she denied it spitefully.” Mrs. Langford’s answer to that was conventionally sympathetic. “It is another of the unthinkable pictures, I suppose. I do wish the child wouldn’t torment herself so over her work. It is all well enough as an accomplishment, but she needn’t make a martyr of herself. Harry is quite right about that.” Having a very considerable reverence for art, Dorothy was not so sure of this, but she left the point uncontested and asked a question suggested by the mention of Harry Antrim. “You don’t suppose she has quarrelled with Harry, do you?” “It is quite possible. It’s a way they have had ever since they were children together.” “Still, it might be serious this time.” “No fear of that,” said the mother easily. “Isabel thinks a great deal more of him than she has ever admitted, even to herself, perhaps. And as for Harry, I would as soon think of the world coming to an end as of his giving her up.” Dorothy was silenced, but not convinced. “That was one thing I wanted to speak about, mamma,” she said, gathering herself for the plunge; “but there is another. I want to know what has come over us all lately. We seem to be groping about in the dark, trying to hide things from each other. What is the mystery? and why can’t I share it?” “Mystery? Nonsense, child! there is no mystery.” But Dorothy was insistent. “Yes, there is. First, Mr. Brant does us a kindness and drops us, all in the same day. Then, when I wonder at it, you put me off, and father goes deaf, and Will gets angry. And when I ask Harry a civil question about his friend, he snaps me up only a little less savagely than brother. Now Isabel has turned blue and won’t talk, and--and, altogether we seem to be turning into a family of freaks. What is at the bottom of it all? Why doesn’t Mr. Brant come here any more?” The mother’s smile would have been full of meaning for the daughter if the darkness had not hidden it.