“What folly!” he said, leaving her, and throwing himself on a sofa in a dark corner, where the light of the lamp did not reach him. The anxious mother could no longer see his face. It was not with her as in days past, when he would poke into the light, under the shade of the lamp, and put his book on the top of her work, getting many a tender scold for it, or read aloud to her, which was her greatest pleasure. The Doctor was in his study, busy with his paper for the Archæological Society, and as indifferent to his wife’s loneliness as if she had been his housekeeper. Mrs Mitford had long ago got over that. She had accepted it as the natural course of affairs that your husband should go back to his study after dinner. Perhaps it would have plagued more than pleased her now had he suddenly made his appearance in the drawing-room. What she liked was to get her work or her knitting (John’s socks, which she always made with her own hands), and listen, in a soft rapture of ineffable content, as he read to her. It did not matter much what he read; his voice, and the work in her hand, and the consciousness that her boy was there, wrapt her in a silent atmosphere of happiness. But now how different it was! The Doctor by himself in his study, and Kate by herself in her chamber, and the mother and son, with almost the whole breadth of the room between them, each in a corner, he in the dark, she in the light, alone too. And it was all _that girl’s_ fault. It was she who was making him unhappy. “John, won’t you read to me a little, dear?” said his mother from the table. “I can’t to-night,” he answered from the sofa, glad that his face was not visible. He was so vexed and disappointed and mortified, coming in full of the expectation of a long evening in Kate’s society, and finding her gone. A year or two ago it would have brought tears to John’s eyes. He was a man now, and it was not possible to cry, but he was so disappointed that he could scarcely endure himself. Mrs Mitford bore his silence and abstraction as long as she could. It went to her heart--but she was all mother, down to the tips of her fingers; and though it gave her a deep wound to think her boy had thus given her over, she could not bear to see him unhappy. She laid down her work at last, and stole out of the room, wondering if he noticed her going, and went and knocked at Kate’s door. “My dear, I have just made the tea, and it smells so refreshing. I thought, if you had not gone to bed, a cup would do you good,” she said, coming in and taking Kate’s hand. Her eyes were so wistful, such an unspoken prayer was in her face, that a glimmering of what she must mean just flashed upon Kate.