The journey home was not a very eventful one. They were met by Papa and Louis on their arrival, and conducted in triumph to their own little house, which did not look so attractive, by any means, as it used to do. Then they settled down without more ado into the family use and wont. With so great a change in all their prospects and intentions--so strange an enlargement of their horizon and extension of their hopes--it was remarkable how little change befell the outward life and customs of the family. Marian, it was true, was “engaged;” but Marian might have been engaged to poor Harry Oswald without any great variation of circumstances; and that was always a possibility lying under everybody’s eyes. It did not yet disturb the _habits_ of the family; but this new life which they began to enter--this life of separated and individual interest--took no small degree of heart and spirit out of those joint family pleasures and occupations into which Marian constantly brought a reference to Louis, which Agnes passed through with a preoccupied and abstracted mind, and from which Charlie was far away. The stream widened, the sky grew broader, yet every one had his or her separate and peculiar firmament. A maturer, perhaps, and more complete existence was opening upon them; but the first effect was by no means to increase the happiness of the family. They loved each other as well as ever; but they were not so entirely identical. It was a disturbing influence, foreign and unusual; it was not the quiet, assured, undoubting family happiness of the days which were gone. Then there were other unaccordant elements. Rachel, whom Mrs Atheling insisted upon retaining with them, and who was extremely eager on her own part to find something to do, and terrified to think herself a burden upon her friends; and Louis, who contented himself with his pittance of income, but only did his mere duty at the office, and gave all his thoughts and all his powers to the investigation which engrossed him. Mrs Atheling was very much concerned about Louis. If all this came to nothing, as was quite probable, she asked her husband eagerly what was to become of these young people--what were they to do? For at present, instead of trying to get on, Louis, who had no suspicion of the truth, gave his whole attention to a visionary pursuit, and was content to have the barest enough which he could exist upon. Mr Atheling shook his head, and could not make any satisfactory reply. “There was no disposition to idleness about the boy,” Papa said, with approval. “He was working very hard, though he might make nothing by it; and when this state of uncertainty was put an end to, then they should see.” And Marian of late had become actively suspicious and observant. Marian attacked her mother boldly, and without concealment. “Mamma, it is something about Louis that Charlie has gone abroad for!” she said, in an unexpected sally, which took the garrison by surprise.