She laughed, but it was not a cheerful laugh. And was it possible that on the other side of the partition her father was sitting, whose poor little daughter had nothing better to do to amuse herself than to go to bed? What could James mean by such conduct? It was very hard for Cherry to be just in such strange circumstances, and not to blame, as most people would have done, the woman who was concerned. Visions of ill-names, such as ‘elderly siren,’ which innocent Miss Cherry had read in the papers, drifted into her simple brain in spite of herself. Why did she let him do it? Why did she encourage him to go to her? What were they talking about? Miss Cherry, though she was so sleepy, could not really rest, even after she went to bed, till she heard once more that dull sound through the house of the great door shutting. The houses in the Square were well built for London houses, and the corresponding sounds in the house next door, when the visitor departed, did not reach the watcher’s ears. But it was with some anxiety in her thoughts that Miss Cherry wondered how the sons liked it, and what they thought of their mother’s constant visitor: and she a married woman: and James still making believe to feel his wife’s loss so deeply that he could not enter his drawing-room without pain! Miss Cherry blushed in the darkness, throwing a warm reflection upon the pillow, if there had been any light to show it, over this thought. CHAPTER XX. THE PERUGINO. Oswald Meredith had a new direction given to his thoughts. He was not, as may be easily divined, so clever as Cara gave him credit for being, nor, indeed, as his family supposed, who knew him better than Cara did; but he was full of fancy and a kind of gay, half-intellectual life which might be called poetic so far as it went. His head was full of the poets, if not of poetry; and a certain joyous consciousness of existence and of well-being which made his own pursuits and enjoyments beautiful and important to him, was in all he did and said. He was not so much selfish as self-occupied, feeling a kind of glory and radiance about his youth, and conscious freedom and conscious talents which elated him, without any absolute vanity or self-love. Naturally all the people who were equally self-occupied, or whose temperaments ran counter to Oswald’s, took it for granted that he was vain and selfish; and those who loved him best were often impatient with him for this happy contentment, which made him pleased with his own aimless ways, and indifferent to everything that demanded any exertion which would interfere with the smooth current of his enjoyable and enjoying life. For himself he was too good-natured to criticise or find fault with anyone--having no ideal himself to derange his satisfaction with his own circumstances and behaviour, he had no ideal for others, and was quite content that they, too, should enjoy themselves as they pleased, and