When Charles had thanked him for the anxiety he had shown respecting him in his illness, he had thanked him also for the consent he had given to his marriage with Lucy Effingham. Sir Francis cut him short, however: "You have nothing to thank me for," he replied sharply, "you chose for yourself, without putting any trust or confidence in me. It so happened that your choice chimed with my opinion; but I have a good deal more to say upon that subject, which shall be said hereafter, and which may not be quite so pleasant to you." Charles very well understood from these words, that Sir Francis, as was frequently the case, wished to hold over his head, as a drawn sword, the vague expectation of some future retribution for having ventured to own his love, to Lucy herself, without making him acquainted therewith. As he had often experienced, however, that such vague menaces produced no effects, he did not make himself uneasy. But that which alarmed him more than anything which fell from his father's lips, was a certain degree of anxiety which he beheld constantly in the countenance of his mother, and her informing him more than once, that there was a matter which weighed much upon her mind, which she must tell him soon. She put it off, however, from day to day, and the disinclination she had to speak, served more than anything to confirm Charles in the belief that what she was about to tell him, was not only important, but painful in a great degree. The fourth inmate of the house, for such Mr. Driesen seemed entirely to have become, had lost much of his good spirits, was grave, thoughtful, somewhat irritable. His books seemed no longer to have that charm for him, which they once had possessed, and he passed the greater part of the day, either in reading and answering letters, or in walking about the grounds with his hands in his pockets. He would, sometimes, indeed, amuse himself by throwing a stone at a squirrel, and succeeded in knocking one off a branch; but he did not pursue this long, and there was a restlessness about him, which seemed to show that he was ill or unhappy. Such was the state of the family at Harbury Park, at the end of about nine days after Charles Tyrrell's return, when Sir Francis entered the room, one morning, while Mr. Driesen was sitting reading the newspaper, with the gathering of a coming storm upon his brow.