They ha ve got Frank by the scruff of the neck--he can't wriggle himself free--and he makes a merit of yielding to sheer necessity." The three months' interval of Frank's probation in London passed less cheerfully than usual in the household at Combe-Raven.
As the summer came nearer and nearer, Mrs.Vanstone's spirits, in spite of her resolute efforts to control them, became more and more depressed.
"I do my best," she said to Miss Garth; "I set an example of cheerfulness to my husband and my children--but I dread July." Norah's secret misgivings on her sister's account rendered her more than usually serious and uncommunicative, as the year advanced.

Even Mr.Vanstone, when July drew nearer, lost something of his elasticity of spirit.

He kept up appearances in his wife's presence--but on all other occasions there was now a perceptible shade of sadness in his look and manner.
Magdalen was so changed since Frank's departure that she helped the general depression, instead of relieving it.

All her movements had grown languid; all her usual occupations were pursued with the same weary indifference; she spent hours alone in her own room; she lost her interest in being brightly and prettily dressed; her eyes were heavy, her nerves were irritable, her complexion was altered visibly for the worse--in one word, she had become an oppression and a weariness to herself and to all about her.

Stoutly as Miss Garth contended with these growing domestic difficulties, her own spirits suffered in the effort.
Her memory reverted, oftener and oftener, to the March morning when the master and mistress of the house had departed for London, and then the first serious change, for many a year past, had stolen over the family atmosphere.