That evening Cara sat solitary after dinner, the pretty silver lamp lighted, with its white moon-orb of light upon the table by her; the fire burning just bright enough for company, for it still was not cold. She had said, timidly, ‘Shall you come upstairs this evening, papa?’ and had received a mildly evasive answer, and she thought about nine o’clock that she heard the hall door shut, just as John came into the room with tea. She thought the man looked at her compassionately, but she would not question him. The room looked very pretty in the fire, light and lamplight, with the little tray gleaming in all its brightness of china and silver, and the little white figure seated by the fire; but it was very lonely. She took up a book a little more interesting than the one which had been her first resource, but presently let it drop on her knee wondering and asking herself would Oswald come? Perhaps he had forgotten; perhaps he had noticed her shrink when he went away, and, meaning nothing by his gesture, did not know why she had retreated from him--perhaps----. But who could tell what might have stopped him? A boy was not like a girl--he might have been asked somewhere. He might have gone to the theatre. Perhaps he had a club, and was there among his friends. All this passed through her head as she sat with the book in her hand, holding it open on her knee. Then she began to read, and forgot for the minute; then suddenly the book dropped again, and she thought, with a sort of childish longing, of what might be going on next door, just on the other side of the wall, where everything was sure to be so cheerful. If she could only pierce that unkindly wall, and see through! That made her think of Pyramus and Thisbe, and she smiled, but soon grew grave again. Was this how she was to go on living--lonely all the evening through, her father seeking society somewhere else, she could not tell where. She thought of the drawing-room at the Hill, and her eyes grew wet; how they would miss her there! and here nobody wanted Cara. Her father, perhaps, might think it right that his child should live under his roof; but that was all he cared apparently; and was it to be always thus, and never change? At seventeen it is so natural to think that everything that is, is unalterable and will never change. Then Cara, with a gulp, and a determination to be as happy as she could in the terrible circumstances, and above all, to shun Oswald, who had not kept his word, opened her book again, and this time got into the story, which had been prefaced by various interludes of philosophising, and remembered no more till nurse came to inquire if she did not mean to go to bed to-night. So the evening did not hang so heavy on her hands as she thought.