When pen, ink, and paper were offered to him, that was the doctor's prescription.
Mrs.Linley consulted her husband on the choice of the seaside place to which the child should be removed.
The blank which Sydney's departure left in the life of the household was felt by the master and mistress of Mount Morven--and felt, unhappily, without any open avowal on either side of what was passing in their minds.

In this way the governess became a forbidden subject between them; the husband waited for the wife to set the example of approaching it, and the wife waited for the husband.

The trial of temper produced by this state of hesitation, and by the secret doubts which it encouraged, led insensibly to a certain estrangement--which Linley in particular was morbidly unwilling to acknowledge.

If, when the dinner-hour brought them together, he was silent and dull in his wife's presence, he attributed it to anxiety on the subject of his brother--then absent on a critical business errand in London.

If he sometimes left the house the first thing in the morning, and only returned at night, it was because the management of the model farm had become one of his duties, in Randal's absence.