There had never been any mystery, any anxiety, save in respect to the illnesses that break the routine of life with innocent trouble which anybody may share, in this innocent household. To make excuses for an absent member, and account for his absence as if it were the most natural thing in the world--not to show that you start at every opening of the door, to refrain heroically from that forlorn watch of the window, that listening for every sound which anxiety teaches: to talk and smile even when there are noises, a stir outside, a summons at the door that seems to indicate the wanderer’s return--how were they to have that science of trouble all in a moment? Lady Penton leaped to its very heights at once. She sat there as if all her life she had been going through that discipline, talking to Mab, surveying the children, neglecting nothing, while all the while her heart was in her ears, and she heard before any one the faintest movement outside. They were all very silent at table, Sir Edward making no attempt to disguise the fact that he was out of humor and had nothing to say to any one, while the girls exchanged piteous looks and kept up an anxious telegraphic communication. But Walter never appeared. Neither to dinner, neither in the evening did he return--the two meals passed without him, his place vacant, staring in their faces, as Anne said. Where was he? What could he be doing? Into what depth of trouble and misery must a boy have fallen who darts out of his father’s house without any breakfast, and, so far as can be known, has nothing to eat all day? Where could he go to have any dinner? What could have happened to him? These words express the entire disorganization of life, the end of all things in a family point of view, which this dreadful day meant to Walter’s sisters, and to his mother in a less degree. Nothing else that could have been imagined would have reached their hearts in the same way. And the last aggravation was given by the fact that all this which they felt so acutely to imply the deepest reproach against Walter was apparent to little Mab, sitting there with her little smiling face as if there was no trouble in the world. Oh, it was far better, no doubt, that she should suspect nothing, that she should remain in her certainty, so far as Penton Hook was concerned, that there was no trouble in the world! But her face, all tranquil and at ease, her easy flow of talk, her questions, her commentaries, as if life were all so simple and anybody could understand it! The impatience which sometimes almost overcame all the powers of self-control in Ally and in Anne, can not be described. They almost hated Mab’s pretty blue eyes, and her comfortable, innocent, unsuspecting smile. Had any one told them that little Mab, that little woman of the world, was very keenly alive to everything that was going on, and had formed her little theory, and believed herself to know quite well what it was all about, the other girls would have rejected such an accusation with disdain.