“I suppose a great many of us suffer from harm done before we were born,” he said, gravely. “This is no solitary instance.” “Ah, Geoff, it is natural, quite natural, that you should feel so. I forgot how deeply you were affected by all that happened then.” “I did not mean that,” he said, gravely. His youthful face had changed out of its light-hearted calm. “Indeed I had heard something of this, and I wanted to speak to you----” “Run away, my darlings,” said Lady Stanton; “go and see what--nurse is about. Make her go down with you to the village and take the tea and sugar to the old women in the almshouses. This is the day--don’t you remember?” “So it is,” said Annie. “But we did not want to remember,” said Fanny; “we liked better to stay with you.” However, they went off, reluctant yet obedient. They were used to being sent away. It was seldom their mother who did it, willingly--but everybody else did it with peremptory determination--and the little girls were used to obey. They untwined themselves from her arms, to which they had been clinging, and went away close together, with a soft rush and sweep as of one movement. “There go the doves,” said Geoff, looking after them with kind admiration like that of a brother. It pleased Lady Stanton to see the friendly pleasure in them which lighted the young man’s eyes. Whoever married him, he would always, she thought, be a brother to her neglected children, who counted for so little in the family. She looked after them with that mother-look which, whether in joy or sorrow, is close upon tears. Then she turned to him with eyes softened by that unspeakable tenderness: “Whatever you wish,” she said. “Tell me, Geoff; I am ready to hear.” “I am as bad as the rest. You have to send them away for me too.” “There is some reason in it this time. If you have heard about the little Musgraves you know how miserable it all is,” said Lady Stanton. “The old man will have nothing to say to them. He lets them live there, but takes no notice--his son’s children! And Mary has everything upon her shoulders.” “Cousin Mary, will it hurt you much to tell me all about it?” said the young man. “Forgive me, I know it must be painful; but all that is so long over, and everything is so changed----” “You mean I have married and forgotten,” she said, her lips beginning to quiver. “I scarcely remember anything about it,” said Geoff, looking away from her that his eyes might not disturb her more, “only a confused sort of excitement and wretchedness, and then a strange new sense of importance. We had been nobodies till then--my mother and I. But I have heard a few things lately. Walter,--will it pain you if I speak of him?” “Poor Walter!--no. Geoff, you must understand that Walter loved somebody else better than me.” She said this half in honest avowal of that humiliation which had been one of the great wonders of her life, partly in excuse of her own easy forgetfulness of him.