meant nothing, why then Mr. Harris pronounced himself a Dutchman; and the wonder breathed upwards from the kitchen and housekeeper’s room to my lady’s chamber, where her maid did all a maid could do (and this is not little, as most heads of a family know) to awaken suspicion. It was suggested to her ladyship that it was very strange that Mr. Tritton should have been walking about the house at six in the morning, waking up my lady with his sneezings--and it was a mercy there had not been a robbery, with the library window “open to the ground,” left open all night: and then for my lord to be in bed at eleven was a thing that had never happened before since his lordship had the measles. “I hope he is not sickening for one of these fevers,” Lady Stanton’s attendant said. This made Geoff’s mother start, and give a suppressed scream of apprehension, and inquire anxiously whether there was any fever about. She had already in her cool drawing-room, over her needlework, felt a vague uneasiness. Geoff had never, since those days of the measles, missed breakfast and prayers before; he had sent her word that he had overslept himself, that he had been sitting up late on the previous night--but altogether it was odd. Lady Stanton, however, subdued her panic, and sat still and dismissed her maid, waiting with many tremors in her soul till Geoff should come to account for himself. He had been the best boy in the world, and had never given her any anxiety; but all Lady Stanton’s neighbours had predicted the coming of a time when Geoff would “break out,” and when the goodness of his earlier days would but increase the riot of the inevitable sowing of wild oats. Lady Stanton had smiled at this, but with a smouldering sense of insecurity in her heart; alarmed, though she knew there was no cause. Mothers are an order of beings peculiarly constituted, full of certainties and doubts, which moment by moment give each other the lie. Ah, no, Geoff would not “break out,” would not “go wrong;” it was not in him. He was too true, too honourable, too pure--did not she know every thought in his mind, and feeling in his heart? But oh, the anguish if Geoff should not be so true and so pure--if he should be weak, be tempted and fall, and stain the whiteness which his mother so deeply trusted in, yet so trembled for! Who can understand such paradoxes? She would have believed no harm of her boy--and yet in her horror of harm for him the very name of evil gave her a panic. Nothing wonderful in that. She sat and trembled to the very tyings of her shoe, and yet was sure, certain, ready to answer to the whole world for her son, who had done no evil. Other women who have sons know what Lady Stanton felt. She sat nervously still, listening to every sound, till he should come and explain himself. Why was he so late? What had happened last night to make the house uneasy? Lady Stanton would not allow herself to think that she was alarmed. It was