She did not speak, but she looked into his face, and clasped his hand tightly.  She was troubled with her own mood.  Try as she would, it was impossible to prevent herself drifting into most unusual silences.  Stephen’s words and looks filled her heart; she had only half heard the things her father had been saying.  Never before had she found an hour in her life when she wished for solitude in preference to his society,—­her good, tender father.  She put Stephen out of her mind, and tried again to feel all her old interest in his plans for their amusement.  Alas, alas!  The first secret, especially if it be a love-secret, makes a break in that sweet, confidential intercourse between a parent and child which nothing restores.  The squire hardly comprehended that there might be a secret.  Charlotte was unthoughtful of wrong; but still there was a repression, a something undefinable between them, impalpable, but positive as a breath of polar air.  She noticed the mountains, for he made her do so; but the birds sang sleepy songs to her unheeded, and the yellow asphodels made a kind of sunshine at her feet that she never saw; and even her father’s voice disturbed the dreamy charm of thoughts that touched a deeper, sweeter joy than moor or mountain, bird or flower, had ever given her.

Before they reached home, the squire had also become silent.  He came into the hall with the face of one dissatisfied and unhappy.  The feeling spread through the house, as a drop of ink spreads itself through a glass of water.  It almost suited Sophia’s mood, and Mrs. Sandal was not inclined to discuss it until the squire was alone with her.  Then she asked the question of all questions the most irritating, “What is the matter with you, squire?”

“What is the matter, indeed?  Love-making.  That is the matter, Alice.”

“Charlotte?”

“Yes.”

“And Stephen Latrigg?”

“Yes.”

“I thought as much.  Opportunity is a dangerous thing.”

“My word!  To hear you talk, one would think it was matterless how our girls married.”

“It is never matterless how any girl marries, squire; and our Charlotte”—­

“Oh, I thought Charlotte was a child yet!  How could I tell there was danger at Up-Hill?  You ought to have looked better after your daughters.  See that she doesn’t go near-hand Latrigg’s again.”

“I wouldn’t be so foolish, William.  It’s a deal better not to notice.  Make no words about it; and, if you don’t like Stephen, send Charlotte away a bit.  Half of young people’s love-affairs is just because they are handy to each other.”

“‘Like Stephen!’ It is more than a matter of liking, as you know very well.  If Harry Sandal goes on as he has been going, there will be little enough left for the girls; and they must marry where money will not be wanted.  More than that, I’ve been thinking of brother Tom’s boy for one of them.  Eh?  What?”

“You mean, you have been writing to Tom about a marriage?  I would have been above a thing like that, William.  I suppose you did it to please your mother.  She always did hanker after Tom, and she always did dislike the Latriggs.  I have heard that when people were in the grave they ‘ceased from troubling,’ but”—­