"Get some brandy for him, Penelope. He is feeling faint," said my mother, tossing me her keys. I obeyed, feeling that she understood and I did not, as often happened between us. I was a few minutes away, for I had to cross the yard to the dwelling house, and then I found that my mother had given me the wrong keys. I filled a glass from a jar of cherries we had just put up, and returned to the laundry. My husband was white, but did not look at all faint. He was leaning his elbow on the deal table covered with blanket, and nervously folding and stretching a ruffle which lay by the bowl of starch. When I came in he suddenly stopped speaking, and my mother saw that I noticed it. "Eustace was saying, my dear," she said, "that he will have to go--almost immediately--to England, on account of the property. He wanted to go on alone, and fetch you later, when things should be a little to rights. But I was telling him, Penelope, that I felt sure you would recognise it as your duty to go with him from the very first, and help him through any difficulties." My dear mother had resumed her ironing; and as she said these last words, her voice trembled a little, and she stooped very attentively over the cap she was smoothing. Eustace was sitting there, so unlike himself suddenly, and muttered nervously, "I really can see no occasion, Maman, for anything of the sort." I cannot say what possessed me; I verily think a presentiment of the future. But I put down the plate and glass, looked from my mother to my husband, and burst into a childish flood of tears. I heard my husband give a little peevish "Ah!" rise, leave the room, and then bang the door of his laboratory upstairs behind him. And then I felt my dear mother's arms about me, and her kiss on my cheek. I mopped my eyes with my apron, but at first I could not see properly for the tears. When I was able to see again what struck me was the scene through the long window, open down to the ground.