thoughts were running on a lively under-current. Why was Oswald never here? and why did Cara take his absence so quietly? These were the two leading thoughts with which he perplexed himself; and as he never made out any sort of answer to them, the question ran on for ever. That evening on which Mr. Beresford had gone to have his parting interview with Mrs. Meredith, Miss Cherry was more preoccupied than usual. She sighed over her crewels with more heaviness than could be involved in the mere difficulties of the pattern. To be sure, there was enough in that pattern to have driven any woman out of her senses. And as she puckered her brows over it, Miss Cherry sighed; but this sigh told of a something more heavy which lay upon her mind, the distracted state of which may be best described by the fact that when they were in the middle of their reading, Cara hemming on with a countenance absorbed, Miss Cherry made the communication of which she was full, all at once, without warning, breaking in, in the middle of a sentence, so that Edward’s voice mingled with hers for a line or so, before he could stop himself-- ‘Your papa is thinking of going away.’ ‘What?’ cried Cara and Edward in a breath. ‘Your papa,’ said Miss Cherry, with another great sigh, ‘is thinking of shutting up his house again, and going away.’ ‘Aunt Cherry!’ cried Cara, with the colour rushing suddenly to her face as it had a way of doing when she was moved: and she half-turned and cast a glance at Edward of wonder and sudden dismay. As for him, he had not leisure to feel the strange delight of this confidential glance, so entirely struck dumb was he with the appalling news. He grew pale as Cara grew red, and felt as if all the blood was ebbing out of his heart. ‘It is not that we will not be happy--oh! happy beyond measure--to have you again, my darling,’ said Miss Cherry; ‘but I would be false if I did not say what a disappointment it is to think, after all our hopes for my poor James, that he is not able to settle down in his own house. I can’t tell you what a disappointment it is. So far as we are concerned--Aunt Charity and I--it will be new life to us to have you home. But we did not wish to be selfish, to think of our own comfort, and it will be such a shock to dear Aunt Charity. She always said, as you know, Cara, what a comfort it was to think that the only man of the family was at hand, whatever happened. I don’t know how I am to break it to her, and in her weak state of health.’ ‘But, Aunt Cherry--what does it mean?--What has made him change?--Are you sure you are not mistaken? Don’t you think you have misunderstood? It does not seem possible. Are you quite, quite certain?’