“There is nothing in the letter that concerns you,” said Mr. Vanstone.

It was the first direct rebuff that Magdalen had ever received from her father.  She looked at him with an incredulous surprise, which would have been irresistibly absurd under less serious circumstances.

Nothing more was said.  For the first time, perhaps, in their lives, the family sat round the breakfast-table in painful silence.  Mr. Vanstone’s hearty morning appetite, like his hearty morning spirits, was gone.  He absently broke off some morsels of dry toast from the rack near him, absently finished his first cup of tea—­then asked for a second, which he left before him untouched.

“Norah,” he said, after an interval, “you needn’t wait for me.  Magdalen, my dear, you can go when you like.”

His daughters rose immediately; and Miss Garth considerately followed their example.  When an easy-tempered man does assert himself in his family, the rarity of the demonstration invariably has its effect; and the will of that easy-tempered man is Law.

“What can have happened?” whispered Norah, as they closed the breakfast-room door and crossed the hall.

“What does papa mean by being cross with Me?” exclaimed Magdalen, chafing under a sense of her own injuries.

“May I ask—­what right you had to pry into your father’s private affairs?” retorted Miss Garth.

“Right?” repeated Magdalen.  “I have no secrets from papa—­what business has papa to have secrets from me!  I consider myself insulted.”

“If you considered yourself properly reproved for not minding your own business,” said the plain-spoken Miss Garth, “you would be a trifle nearer the truth.  Ah! you are like all the rest of the girls in the present day.  Not one in a hundred of you knows which end of her’s uppermost.”

The three ladies entered the morning-room; and Magdalen acknowledged Miss Garth’s reproof by banging the door.

Half an hour passed, and neither Mr. Vanstone nor his wife left the breakfast-room.  The servant, ignorant of what had happened, went in to clear the table—­found his master and mistress seated close together in deep consultation—­and immediately went out again.  Another quarter of an hour elapsed before the breakfast-room door was opened, and the private conference of the husband and wife came to an end.

“I hear mamma in the hall,” said Norah.  “Perhaps she is coming to tell us something.”

Mrs. Vanstone entered the morning-room as her daughter spoke.  The color was deeper on her cheeks, and the brightness of half-dried tears glistened in her eyes; her step was more hasty, all her movements were quicker than usual.

“I bring news, my dears, which will surprise you,” she said, addressing her daughters.  “Your father and I are going to London to-morrow.”

Magdalen caught her mother by the arm in speechless astonishment.  Miss Garth dropped her work on her lap; even the sedate Norah started to her feet, and amazedly repeated the words, “Going to London!”