be wondered at."

"O no, no," said Henrietta. "What a mystery it has always seemed to us
about papa! She sometimes mentioning him in talking about her childish
days and Knight Sutton, but if we tried to ask any more, grandmamma
stopping us directly, till we learned to believe we ought never to
utter his name. I do believe, though, that mamma herself would have
found it a comfort to talk to us about him, if poor dear grandmamma had
not always cut her short, for fear it should be too much for her."

"But had you not always an impression of something dreadful about his
death?"

"O yes, yes; I do not know how we acquired it, but that I am sure we
had, and it made us shrink from asking any questions, or even from
talking to each other about it. All I knew I heard from Beatrice. Did
Uncle Geoffrey tell you this?"

"Yes, he told me when he was here last Easter, and I was asking him to
speak to mamma about my fishing, and saying how horrid it was to be
kept back from everything. First he laughed, and said it was the
penalty of being an only son, and then he entered upon this history, to
show me how it is."

"But it is very odd that she should have let you learn to ride, which
one would have thought she would have dreaded most of all."

"That was because she thought it right, he says. Poor mamma, she said
to him, 'Geoffrey, if you think it right that Fred should begin to
ride, never mind my folly.' He says that he thinks it cost her as much