When Agnes went upstairs after this genial but interrupted meal she was met by her sister’s maid, who begged her to go at once to Lady Frogmore. “My lady’s very restless,” said the attendant, who was something more than a maid, the same who had brought her home after her recovery. “You don’t think there’s anything wrong?” said Agnes, breathless, for notwithstanding the tranquillity of so many years, any trifle was enough to arouse her anxieties. “Oh, I hope not,” said the maid. This was enough, it need not be said, to send Miss Hill trembling to her sister’s side. Mary was lying very quietly in bed, with some boxes on the table beside her, and a miniature of her husband, which she always carried about with her, in her hands. “You wanted me, Mary?” “No,” said Lady Frogmore, gently; then, after a pause—“Yes: I hope you will not be disappointed, dear Agnes, I think I must go home.”

“Home! but we came for Duke’s party.”

“I know; but I do not think I can remain any longer. Perhaps if you were to stay——”

“I will not stay if you go, Mary.”

“I thought Letitia would not mind so much if one of us was here. I can’t stay, I can’t,” said Mary, with a little sudden burst of tears. “Don’t ask me. My head goes round and round——”

“No, indeed,” said her sister; “no one shall ask you. I feared it might be too much; and then the tent was so hot this afternoon.”

“The tent?” said Lady Frogmore, with a bewildered look. “I am not thinking of any tent. It is that the place is strange. I can’t look him in the face, Agnes. Look! don’t you think he is changed? He seems to reproach me.” She held the miniature out to her sister. “And I don’t know what for,” she cried, weeping. “If I knew what it was for I could do better. But I can’t tell, I can’t tell.” After a minute she dried her eyes and looked at her sister again with a faint smile. “Don’t look so frightened, Agnes, as if you thought I was—silly, or something. No, I know it’s only a picture. I don’t mean the miniature has changed; but when I see his face in my heart he always seems to reproach me. What have I done? Oh, if I only knew what I had done!”

“Dear Mary,” said Agnes, “don’t trouble your mind with imaginations. It is all fancy. Do you think Frogmore, who was so fond of you, would trouble your poor innocent soul with a reproach? Oh no, oh no.”

“I think so, too,” said Mary, “but sometimes there comes a terror over me as if I have neglected something or forgotten something. If he sees us, Agnes, he must know I never meant it! He must know I never meant it! People can’t grow less understanding but more understanding when they die.”

“Surely,” said Agnes, “don’t you remember, dear, in ‘In Memoriam’—with larger, other eyes than ours?”

“It must be so,” said Mary, holding her sister’s hand. “But I have such a dreadful feeling as if I had done something wrong.”

“No, no, my dear; no, my poor dear.”

“If I have it has been in ignorance, Agnes. I have never intended— Look,” she said, suddenly turning to the table at the bedside, “do these old things belong to me?”

Poor Agnes took this change of subject for a sign of still further derangement of her sister’s troubled thoughts. She gave a slight glance at the little common-place boxes. “Oh, my dear, don’t think of such trifling things,” she said.

“Agnes, look. Do they belong to me?”

“These boxes? yes. I think so—they used to hold your work. They used to——” Then Agnes paused, for she suddenly remembered where the larger of the two, an Indian box in sandal wood, inlaid with ivory and silver, had always stood, and the last use that had been made of it. “They are not of any consequence. They can’t have anything to do with what we are speaking of,” she said.

“You are sure they are mine?” said Mary, interrogating her face with anxious eyes.

“Oh, Mary, dear! yes, I am sure enough. They were put into a cupboard, I remember. There is a train about eleven, but perhaps to-morrow you may think differently. It will be a great disappointment for the boys.”

Mary looked at her fixedly as if trying to understand. Then she said, “Tell Martin, Agnes, to pack them up. I want to look into them, perhaps there is something in them that will show— But not here, not here!”

“It shall be just as you please,” said Agnes, kissing Lady Frogmore’s pale face. Martin whispered that she would not go to bed, that she did not like her lady’s looks, that she would call Agnes at once in case of any need, thus securing for poor Agnes a wakeful and miserable night, as it is the habit of careful attendants to do. But it turned out that there was no occasion for this zeal. Mary slept, or at least was very quiet all the night. But she had not changed her mind in the morning. “Don’t ask me to stay,” she cried “I can’t, I can’t stay.” It was the morning of the ball, and the household at the Park was so much absorbed by that great event that so small a matter as the departure of a guest did not tell much. Agnes found Duke out of doors, closely attended, like his shadow, by Mar, just setting out upon some long expedition to cheat the hours until it should be time for lunch. “The day before a ball is always such a long day,” he said with simplicity. “We are going off to pass the time.” “And I am going off,” said Agnes, “though not to pass the time. I am glad I have found you two to say good-bye.”

“You are going away!” they both cried in consternation.

“I knew,” cried Agnes, with a certain relief in expressing her feeling, “I knew it would be too much for her bringing her here. Oh, yes, it’s true I was anxious to come. I wanted her to come, but I always felt it was a risk. Dear boys, I’m going to take you into my confidence. You’re such friends! Thank God, you’re such friends! Well, then, I can tell you, I think she is beginning to awake.”

“Aunt Mary?” said Duke, with a tone of awe. Mar said nothing, but his pale face crimsoned over, and he never took his eyes from his aunt’s face.

“I think she’s been in a kind of sleep all this time. Yesterday had a great effect upon her. She told me after, she had dreamed that there had been a great dinner and toasts, and one was to her old Frogmore. It has disturbed her mind, and she is going away.”

“Oh,” cried Duke, “that’s not nice of Aunt Mary. My ball! I’ll go and beg her to stay.”

Mar said nothing, but kept his eyes on Agnes’ face, watching her looks.

“You may go and say good-bye to her; but not Mar. And don’t say anything of Mar, especially not as Frogmore. And Mar, my dear, you must keep away. She is so much excited already. You must not show yourself. She has found some old things she had before you were born, and I think her memory is beginning to awake. But, my dear, you must keep away.”

“She does not seem to notice whether I keep away or whether I show myself,” said Mar. “Was ever such a thing dreamed of as that’s one mother—one’s mother! should cast one off. In all the books I have ever read there has never been anything like this.”

“Do you think it is her fault?” said Agnes, with sudden anger.

“How can I tell?” cried the boy. “It is no one’s fault, perhaps; but that does not make it any easier to bear.”

“I could tell you whose fault it was,” cried Agnes. “Oh, nothing easier: but it is not your poor mother, the unfortunate victim, who is to blame.”

Mar’s eyes blazed in his pale face. “Who is it? Who is it?” he cried.

“Oh, what a wicked woman I am,” cried Agnes, suddenly coming to herself, “that I should try to make you hate another person who perhaps had not as bad a meaning as I think. Oh, Mar, don’t let us ask whose fault it was. Pray God only that it may be coming right—that my poor Mary—— You don’t love your mother, Mar.”

The boy looked at her intently, keenly, with his bright, anxious eyes. He looked for a moment as if about to speak, and then turned hastily away.

“Ah, well,” said Agnes, with a sigh, “perhaps it is too much to expect: but some time you will know better. She says that your father reproaches her; that his face in his picture is changed; that she has done something wrong and displeased him; but what it is she does not know. O, my poor Mary, my poor Mary! And there is only me to stand by her in the whole world.”

Mar turned round again with his big eyes all veiled and clouded with tears. He tried to speak and could not. The boy was overwhelmed with feelings which were too strong for him, which he could not either master or understand.

“There is the carriage going to fetch her,” said Agnes, “and I must go too. Good-bye, Mar. Oh, it’s a dreadful disappointment to me to go so soon, not to have any more of you. I was your mother when you were little, Mar. You were my baby, and now I don’t see you from year’s end to year’s end. Nobody thinks it is anything to me.”

“Aunt Agnes——”

“Oh Mar, my dear, never mind me, but think sometimes of your poor mother living in a dream and not knowing—and that she may wake up before she dies. God bless you, God bless you, my little Mar.”

Mar was not to be found when Duke came back to look for him, half touched, half triumphant, having given Lady Frogmore, he thought, a few things to think of, though he had not mentioned her son. He had kept his consignÉ according to the letter of Agnes’ instructions, but he had given a hint or two of someone who was waiting for him, and people whom Aunt Mary would not care to see. “I know how particular you are,” the young man had said. Lady Frogmore had not seemed to understand him, but no doubt she understood him, and he hoped would feel ashamed of herself. All this he meant to pour upon Mar, to indemnify him, by the fact that other people cared for him, for his mother’s neglect; but Mar was nowhere to be found. He did not appear at all till late in the afternoon, when he came in very tired and pale, stumbling upstairs to the schoolroom so fatigued that he could scarcely drag one foot after the other. He said he had been in the woods, that he had not wanted any luncheon, that he wanted nothing now except to lie down a little and rest, when his cousins and the servants surrounded him open-mouthed. “Oh, Mar, mamma is so angry. She will not let you come to the ball,” cried Tiny; and Letty gave him a little lecture upon making everybody anxious. But the worst of all was when Letitia herself appeared with a basin of soup in her hand and wrath in her countenance. “I did not think after all the fuss that has been made about you that you would choose this day to put us all out,” she cried, “but I ought to have known that it was just the fuss and nonsense that would turn your silly head. Take this at once, and you can go to bed: for you certainly shan’t come down again to-night.”

“I don’t want anything,” said Mar, turning his head from the light.

“Take it this moment,” cried Letitia; “I am not going to be trifled with. Nourishment you must have, and you shall have it so long as I am here to see after you. I have got a hundred things to do, but I shan’t leave this room till you have taken it. You can do what you will with the others, but you shall not overcome me.”

“Oh, take it, Mar, take it; and then we shall be by ourselves, and I will sit with you,” said Tiny. Mar was too tired almost to lift his head, but he had a forlorn sense of youthful dignity, and would not give battle over the soup. And after he had swallowed it he dozed a little, and was conscious for a time of the comforting presence of Tiny, who, indeed, did a great deal for him in staying half-an-hour with him when there was so many conflicting occurrences going on downstairs—the decorations of the ballroom and the laying of the long tables, and the flowers and all the preparations for the evening, which were fast turning the sober everyday house into a fairy palace. She stole away as soon as she had thought he had gone to sleep, not without a struggle with her conscience, which she put to silence by asking it indignantly what good she could do to Mar when he was asleep? The boy dozed most of the evening, and when Duke and Letty rushed into the room to announce a second victory over their mother, and that he must get up directly for the ball, Mar only shook his head. He said they were to put his windows open so that he might hear the music and that he would go to bed. And it was thus that Mar spent the evening of the ball. He lay awake and heard the music, and wondered to himself how they were enjoying it, and if it was as beautiful as he had fancied it would be, and whether Letty was dancing all the time, and if they ever thought of him lying upstairs listening. They had all promised to come and see him from time to time, but nobody came except Tiny on her way to bed, very angry to be sent upstairs at twelve o’clock, and spoiling the effect of her toilette by her rage and her tears. “They are going to keep it up for hours,” cried Tiny, “and how is a person to sleep with all that row going on.” It amused him faintly to see how angry Tiny was, and that she had entirely forgotten that he had already lain awake listening to it for hours that seemed to him endless. Then when fatigue began to conquer his wakefulness, and he was nearly asleep, there flashed in a brilliant couple, Letty and Duke, making a tour de valse in Mar’s little room, and bringing him sweetmeats from the supper table. They did not come at the promised time, but as soon as they remembered, with the careless, frank affectionateness of brothers and sisters—“It is nearly dawn,” said Mar, lifting his dazzled eyes. “Oh not for hours yet,” they cried, valsing off again, almost before he could say “How beautiful you are, Letty.” It vexed the boy that she did not hear him say it, and the sound of the carriages rattling up and down the avenue kept him awake for the rest of the night. But it was no longer night; it was bright morning when the visitors went away, and the house fell into uneasy silence at last—silence that did not last long; for, of course, the servants had to be up again to put everything straight, and prepare for the needs of the new day. Poor Mar, he too had looked forward a little to the ball, to see it, and decide whether it was as fine in reality as it was in books, and to see Letty dancing, and to hear all the pleasant things that would be said of Duke. It was not so bad for him as it would have been for a girl, who would have wanted to dance and not merely to look on; but still it was a forlorn way of spending the first night of splendor that since ever he was born had taken place in his own house.