“I am very glad that we meet like this,” he said. “Your mother has taken me in, for which I am grateful to her; and I am very glad that we have met. I hope you will not think any worse of me than you can help.” “I do not think worse of you at all,” Paul said, briefly; but he would not enter into conversation. And the whole party were silent. Whether it was the influence of the son’s return, who was nothing now but a secondary person in the house where he had been the chief, or whether there was any other cause beside, Gus could not tell. Even the mother and daughter did not talk to each other. When dinner was over, and Mr. Brown, with his too observant eyes, was got rid of, the forlorn little stranger, who was the new baronet, the conqueror, the master of the situation, could almost have wept, so lonely and left out did he feel. “Is anything going to happen?” he said. “I know I am no better than an outsider among you, but I would like to enter into everything that concerns you, if you would let me. Is anything going to happen?” “I don’t know of anything that is going to happen,” said Paul; and the ladies said nothing. There was no longer that intercourse of looks between them, of half-words and rapid allusions, which Gus admired. They sat, each wrapped as in a cloud of her own. And rarely had a night of such confused melancholy and depression been spent at Markham. Alice, who feared to encounter any examination by her mother, went upstairs again, scarcely entering the drawing-room at all. And Lady Markham sat alone amid all the soft, yet dazzling, lights, which again seemed to blaze as they had blazed when Sir William was dying, suggesting the tranquil household peace which seemed now over for ever. Was it over for ever? The very room in which she was seated was hers no longer. Her son was hers no longer, but about to be lost to her--separated by wide seas, and still more surely by other associations, and the severance of the heart. And even Alice--Lady Markham could not reconcile herself to the thought that while her husband was dying, and she watching by his side, Alice had allowed herself to be drawn into a new life and new thoughts. It seemed an impiety to him who was gone. Everything was impiety to him: the stranger in his place, though that stranger was his son; the shattering of his image, though it was his own hand that had done it; the dispersion of his children. Thank God! three were still the little ones. She thought, with a forlorn pang in her heart, that she would withdraw herself with them to the contracted life of the Dower-house, and there reconstruct her domestic temple. Bell and Marie, Harry and Roland, would retain the idea of their father unimpaired, as Paul and Alice could not do. But what does it matter that all is well with the others when one of your children is in trouble? it is always the lean kine that swallow up those that are fat and flourishing. Her heart was