Chapter 26

IT was not until the middle of the succeeding week that Mr. Markland returned from New York. He had a look of care that did not escape the observation of his wife. To her inquiries as to the cause of his prolonged absence, he replied vaguely, yet with reference to some business of vast magnitude, in which he had become interested. Two days passed without allusion, on either side, to the subject of their daughter's relation to Mr. Lyon, and then, to some question of Mrs. Markland, her husband replied in so absent a way, that she did not press the matter on his attention. Fanny was reserved and embarrassed in the presence of her father, and evidently avoided him.

More than a week went by in this unsatisfactory manner, when, on returning one day from the city, Mr. Markland showed an unusual elation of spirits. As soon as there was an opportunity to be alone with his wife, he said--

"I may have to be absent several weeks."

"Why so?" she asked, quickly, as a shadow fell over her face.

"Business," was briefly answered.

Mrs. Markland sighed, and her eyes fell to the floor.

"I have been a drone in the world's busy hive long enough, Agnes; and now I must go to work again, and that in right good earnest. The business that took me to New York is growing daily in importance, and will require my best thought and effort. The more thoroughly I comprehend it, the more clearly do I see its vast capabilities. I have already embarked considerable money in the enterprise, and shall probably see it to my interest to embark more. To do this, without becoming an active worker and director, would neither be wise nor like your husband, who is not a man to trust himself on the ocean of business without studying well the charts, and, at times, taking fast hold upon the rudder."

"You might have been so happy here, Edward," said Mrs. Markland, looking into his face and smiling feebly.

"A happy idler? Impossible!"

"You have been no idler, my husband, since our retirement from the city. Look around, and say whose intelligence, whose taste, are visible wherever the eye falls?"

"A poor, vain life, for a man of thought and energy, has been mine, Agnes, during the last few years. The world has claims on me beyond that of mere landscape-gardening! In a cultivation of the beautiful alone no man of vigorous mind can or ought to rest satisfied. There is a goal beyond, and it is already dimly revealed, in the far distance, to my straining vision."

"I greatly fear, Edward," replied his wife, speaking in her gentle, yet impressive way, "that when the goal you now appear so eager to reach, is gained, you will see still another beyond."

"It may be so, Agnes," was answered, in a slightly depressed voice; "yet the impulse to bear onward to the goal