The answer to this message was awaited in most awkward silence.  Even Miss Gascoigne seemed to feel that she had gone a bit too far, and busied herself over the tea equipage; while Miss Grey, after one or two deprecating looks at dear Arnold, began knitting nervously at her eternal socks—–­the only aunt-like duty which, in her meek laziness, she attempted to fulfill toward the children.

For Christian, she sat by the fire, where her husband had placed her, absently taking in the externalities—­warm, somber, luxurious—­which, in all human probability, was now her home for life.  For life!  Did that overpowering sense of the inevitable—­so maddening to some, so quieting to others—­cause all small things to sink to their natural smallness, and all painful things to touch her less painfully than otherwise they would have been felt?  It might have been.

Barker returned with the information that all the children were fast asleep, but nurse said, “Of course Dr. Grey could come up if he pleased.”

“Let me go too,” begged Christian.  “Little Oliver will look so pretty in his bed.”

Dr. Grey smiled.  It was a rare thing to be a whole fortnight away from his children, and all the father’s heart was in his loving eyes.  “Come away, then,” he said, all his cheerful looks returning.  “Aunts, you will give us our tea when we return.”

“Well, she does make herself at home!” cried Miss Gascoigne, indignantly, almost before the door had closed.

Miss Grey knitted half a row with a perplexed air, and then, as if she had lighted upon a perfect solution of the difficulty, said lightly, “But then, you see, dear Henrietta, she is at home.”

Home!  Through that chilly gallery, preceded by Barker and his wax-lights; stared upon by those grim portraits, till more than once she started as if she had seen a ghost; up narrow, steep stone stair-cases, which might lead to a prison in a tower or a dormitory in a monastery—­ any where except to ordinary, natural bedchambers.  And when she reached them, what gloomy rooms they were, leading one out of another, up a step and down a step, with great beds that seemed only fit to lie in state in, after having turned one’s face to the wall and slipped out of weary life into the imagined freedom of the life beyond.  Home!  If that was home, Christian shivered.

“Are you cold?  Barker, send Mrs. Grey’s maid with her warm shawl.  Every body feels the Lodge cold at first, but you will get used to it.  Wait one minute,” for she was pressing eagerly to the gleam of light through the half-opened nursery door.  “My wife!”

“Yes Dr. Grey.”

As he put his hands on her shoulders, Christian looked into his eyes—­ right into them, for she was as tall as he.  There was a sad quietness in her expression, but there was no shrinking from him, and no distrust.

“My wife need never be afraid of any thing or any body in this house.”