Her husband’s fear depressed her, she was feeling just then, and rather to her cost, how very remarkably clinging old impressions were. They were hovering round her at that very moment and entwining her in a maze of the old dead visions of dead days, when she was a child herself and wore long lawn nightgowns with frilled sashes, and said prayers. She went over to the fire to make it up and ended by putting it out. “Oh, Henry,” she said at last, from the hearthrug, shivering a little, “what if, after all, we might just as well have allowed our children to run along the common groove like those very fat children of Mrs. Manners’,—they seem wholesome and not devoid of intelligence. And then they are handsome and well grown, yet the boy is ten and not even in Latin; Mrs. Manners considers that in ten years the fact will make no difference in his career. On the contrary, look at Dacre, think of the load of anxiety and thought we have expended upon him and yet——” She broke off sadly. Her husband regarded her for a minute with sympathizing eyes. “Dearest,” he said at last softly, “you are apt to forget the fact that our poor Dacre is—I hate to hurt you, dear, but you know it—he is most unfortunately a throwing-back, and must follow the fate of his kind. He must enter the army,—it is deplorable, but so it must be.” “The army!” murmured the small woman wringing her hands softly, “it is sad, it is hard on us. I do think, dearest, we might have been more successful in our children.” “Our child,” interrupted her husband. Her eyes clouded and she repeated hesitatingly, “Yes, our child—Gwen’s abilities are considerable.” “Yes,” said her father with unmixed satisfaction, “my hopes rest on Gwen, her abilities are indeed most gratifying.” For one fleeting moment, which she blotted from her memory with shame, her mother almost wished they weren’t; she might then be easier to get some knowledge of, and not be quite so alarming. CHAPTER X. THE function was arranged for a certain Wednesday in February, the day before Dacre was to leave for school, and the children had been given formal notice to appear in the drawing-room at three o’clock. They were now waiting in the school-room speculating on the event. They knew it must be something very unusual from the fact of the drawing-room, of all places in the world, being appointed as the scene of action. It was at the end of a dismal six weeks of holidays, mostly spent, by reason of colds, between the nursery and the school-room. Indeed, it had been the very flattest bout of holidays the two had ever yet endured.