He wondered if the children would absorb her interest as much when he was no longer in the background, whether she would be able to find in them all that she wanted, and consolation for his absence. It was not with any sense of blame that this thought went through his mind. Blame her! oh no. To think of her children was surely a mother’s first duty. She was not aware that her husband wanted consolation and help more than they did. How could she know when he did not tell her? And he felt incapable of telling her. He had meant to do it. When he came he had intended as soon as possible to prepare her for it, to lead by degrees to that revelation which could not but be given. But to break in upon all their innocent gaieties, to stop her as she stood kissing her hand to the merry cavalcade as they set out, her eyes shining with a mother’s delight and pride; to call her away from among her pretty daughters (she, her husband thought the fairest of them all), and their pleasant babble about pleasures past and to come, and pour black despair into the cheerful heart, how could he do it, how could any one do it? Such happiness was sacred. He could not interrupt it, he could not destroy it; it was pathetic, tragic, beyond words: on the edge of the precipice! Oh no, no! not now, he could not tell her. Let the holidays be over, let common life resume again, and then--unless by the grace of God something else might happen before. They all noticed, however, that papa was dull--which was the way in which it struck the young people--that he had no sympathy with their gaiety, that he was “grumpy,” which was what it came to. Lizzie thought that this probably arose from dissatisfaction with her marriage, and was indignant. “If he doesn’t think Lance good enough, I wonder what would please him. Did he expect one of the princes to propose to me?” she cried. “Oh, Lizzie, my love, don’t speak so of your father!” “Well, mamma, he should not look at us so,” cried the girl. Mrs. Sandford herself was a little indignant too. Her sympathies were all with the children. She saw disapproval in his subdued looks, and was ready at any moment to spring to arms in defence of her children. And indeed sometimes, in his great trouble, which no one divined, Mr. Sandford would sometimes become impatient. “I wish,” he would say, “that Jack would do something--does he never do anything at all? It frets me to see a young man so idle.” “My dear Edward!” cried his wife, “it is the Long Vacation. What should he have to do?” “And Harry?” Mr. Sandford said.