seemed to tear his heart? He would have done all that for Cara that her song declared her ready to do--was it for Oswald?--answered her upbraiding with unresentful smiles, and thought her looks, however angry, to be like morning roses washed in dew. All that he could have done--but it was Oswald these looks were for, and not for him. Poor boy! he sat with his book before his face, paying no attention, as it seemed, but hearing and seeing everything. And at the end of every song came a little murmur of their voices as they consulted what the next was to be--the prettiest group! he stooping over her, finding her music for her--and the gleam of the candles on the piano making a spot of light about her pretty head and white dress. But Edward would not look, though he seemed to have a picture of them painted upon the blackest of backgrounds in his heart. Miss Cherry was so led astray from the object of her special mission that she scarcely observed that her brother lingered behind them when they left, and in the flurry of finding Oswald at her side as they went down the steps of one house and up the steps of the other, no very lengthened pilgrimage--overlooked altogether the fact that Mr. Beresford had stayed behind. Her heart was beating far more tumultuously than Cara’s, which, indeed, was calm enough, as they went upstairs. The lights were out in the drawing-room, and the two went up to Miss Cherry’s room, where the fire was burning cheerfully. Cara stood before the fire with her little white cloak dropping from her shoulders, and the ruddy glow warming her whiteness, the very image and type of exquisite half-childish maidenhood to the kind eyes which saw her through such soft tears. ‘Oh, my darling!’ said Miss Cherry, ‘surely you will tell me now? I don’t want to thrust myself into your confidence, Cara. I have not said a word, though I have been thinking of nothing else; but oh, my sweet! after to-night you will surely tell me now.’ Miss Cherry had moisture in her eyes. She was breathless and panting with eagerness and with the hurry of running upstairs. The colour went and came as if she had been the heroine of the romance--and indeed she looked a great deal more like the heroine of a romance than Cara did, who turned upon her, calm but wondering, the serenity of her blue eyes. ‘Tell you what, Aunt Cherry? Of course I will tell you everything that happens; but what is there to tell?’ ‘You don’t expect me to be blind,’ said Miss Cherry, almost crying in her disappointment; ‘what I see with my own eyes I can’t be deceived in. And do you think I am so stupid or so old, or, oh, Cara! so indifferent, as not to see everything that concerns my darling’s happiness? You cannot do me such injustice as that.’ ‘But what is it that concerns my happiness?’ said the girl, with a tranquil smile. ‘Did anything happen that I don’t know of? I don’t know anything about it, for my part.’