So she left him.  Her face was bright with smiles, and her words had even a ring of mirth in them; but below all there was a stubborn weight that she could not throw off, a darkness of spirit that no sunshine could brighten.  Since Julius had come into their home, home had never been the same.  There was a stranger at the table and in all its sweet, familiar places, and she was sure that to her he always would be a stranger.  Something was said or done that put them farther apart every day.  She could not understand how any Sandal could be so absolutely out of her love and sympathy.  Who has not experienced these invasions of hostile natures?  Alien voices, characters fundamentally different, yet bound to them by natural ties which the soul refuses to recognize.

The somberness of her thoughts affected her surroundings very much as rain affects the atmosphere.  The hills looked melancholy:  she was aware of every stone on the road.  Alas! this morning she had begun to grow old, for she felt that she had a past,—­a past that could never return.  Hitherto her life had been to-day and to-morrow, and to-morrow always in the sunshine.  Hitherto the thought of Stephen had been blended with something that was to happen.  Now she knew she must always be remembering the days that for them would come no more.  She found herself reviewing even her former visits to Up-Hill.  In them also change had begun.  And it is over the young, sorrow triumphs most cruelly.  They are so easily wounded, so inapt to resist, so harassed by scruples, so astonished at troubles they cannot comprehend, that their very sensitiveness prepares them for suffering.  Very bitter tears are shed before we are twenty years old.  At forty we have learned to accept the inevitable, and to feel many things possible which we once declared would break our hearts in two.

There was an air of great depression also at Up-Hill.  Ducie was full of apprehension.  She said to Charlotte, “When men as old as father fall, they stumble at their own grave; and I can’t think what I’ll do without father.”

“You have Steve.”

“Steve is going away.  He would have left this morning, but for this fresh trouble.  I see you are startled, Charlotte.”

“I am that.  I heard nothing of it.  He moves in a great hurry.”

“He always moves that way, does Steve.”

“How is grandfather?”

“He has had quite a backening since yesterday night.  He has got ’the call,’ Charlotte.  I’ve had more than one sign of it.  Just before he fell he went into the garden, and brought in with him a sprig of ‘Death-come-quickly.’ [The plant Geranium Robertianum.] ‘Father,’ I asked, ‘whatever made you pull that?’ Then he looked so queerly, and answered, ‘I didn’t pull it, Ducie:  I found it on the wall.’  He was quite curious, and sent me to ask this one and the other one if they had been in the garden.  No one had been there; and, at the long end, he said, ’Make no more talk about it, Ducie.  There’s them that go up and down the fellside that no one sees. They lift the latch, and wait not for the open door, the king’s command being urgent.  I have had a message.’  He fell an hour afterwards, Charlotte.  He did not think he was much hurt at the time, but he got his death-throw.  I know it.”