‘I am not so silly as you think me, my dear,’ said Miss Cherry, half offended, ‘I know the meaning of words. Yes, there are reasons. He is not so happy as he thought he might be. No, my darling, I don’t think you are to blame. He does not blame you; he only says it is not possible. If you could get him to move perhaps to another house--but not here: he could not possibly stay here.’ Now it was Cara’s turn to grow pale and Edward’s to grow red. She looked at him again with a wondering, questioning glance, but he did not reply. ‘I hope it has nothing to do with the folly of any busybody--making mischief between him and his friends,’ Edward said, with indignation. ‘Mr. Beresford ought to have some philosophy--he ought not to mind.’ ‘Ah--he might not mind for himself--but when others are concerned,’ said Miss Cherry, mysteriously. ‘But so it is, my dear, Whether we approve or not. I meant to have gone back to poor dear Aunt Charity, but now I am to stay on to shut up the house and settle everything. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good,’ she added, with a smile; ‘we shall have you back again, Cara; and that will be like the spring to the flowers. We gave you up without grumbling--but it is not in nature that we should not be glad to have you back.’ This gentle piece of self-congratulation was all, however, that was said. Cara had grown quite still and pale. She turned her eyes to Edward once more, and looked at him with a sort of woeful appeal that made his heart beat. ‘This is dreadful news,’ he said, with his voice trembling; and then, true to his brotherly generosity, added as steadily as he could, ‘It will be dreadful news for poor Oswald.’ Cara clasped her hands together in a kind of mute prayer. ‘Do you think nothing can be done?’ she said. Now it was Miss Cherry’s turn to feel a little, a very little wounded. ‘You have soon forgotten your old home,’ she said. ‘I thought, though you might be sorry, you would be glad too--to get home.’ ‘It is not that,’ said Cara, with tears in her voice. What a break was this of the calm happiness of the evening, the pleasure of being together, the charm of the poetry, all those ‘influences of soul and sense’ that had been stealing into the girl’s innocent soul and transforming her unawares! No doubt she might have outlived it all and learnt to look back upon that first shock with a smile--but nevertheless it was the first shock, and at the moment it was overwhelming. She looked at Edward again amazed, appealing to him, asking his sympathy; ought he to thrust in Oswald between them once more? Between love and honour the young man did not know what to do or say. His heart was wrung with the thought of parting, but it was not to him the same shock and unforeseen, unbelievable calamity--under which she turned appealing to earth and heaven. ‘And I am going to India,’ he said, with a kind of despairing smile and quivering lips.