new breaking up of his life? Not for her mother’s sake, but for Mrs. Meredith’s! Cara paused with her head swimming, and looked round her to see if anything was steady in the sudden whirl. What was steady? Oswald, whom everybody (she could see) supposed to be ‘in love,’ whatever that was, with herself, was, as she knew, ‘in love,’ as he called it, with somebody else. Cara did not associate her own sentiments for anyone with that feeling which Oswald expressed for Agnes, but she felt that her own position was false, as his position was false, and Mrs. Meredith’s and her father’s. Was there nothing in the world that was true? The next day or two was filled with somewhat dolorous arrangements for breaking up again the scarcely-established household. Miss Cherry occupied herself with many sighs in packing away the silver, shutting up the linen, all the household treasures, and covering the furniture with pinafores. Cara’s clothes were in process of packing, Cara’s room was being dismantled. Mr. Beresford’s well-worn portmanteaux had been brought out, and John and Cook, half pleased at the renewed leisure which began to smile upon them, half-vexed at the cessation of their importance as purveyors for and managers of their master’s ‘establishment,’ were looking forward to the great final ‘cleaning up,’ which was to them the chief event of the whole. All was commotion in the house. The intercourse with the house next door had partially ceased; Oswald still came in the morning, and Edward in the evening; but there had been no communication between the ladies of the two houses since the evening when Mr. Beresford took final leave of Mrs. Meredith. To say that there were not hard thoughts of her in the minds of the Beresfords would be untrue, and yet it was impossible that anyone could have been more innocent than she was. All that she had done was to be kind, which was her habit and nature. ‘But too kind,’ Miss Cherry said privately to herself, ‘too kind! Men must not be too much encouraged. They should be kept in their place,’ and then the good soul cried at the thought of being hard upon her neighbour. As for Cara, she never put her thoughts on the subject into words, being too much wounded by the mere suggestion. But in her mind, too, there was a sense that Mrs. Meredith must be wrong. It could not be but that she must be wrong; and they avoided each other by instinct. After poor James was gone, Miss Cherry promised herself she would call formally and bid good-by to that elderly enchantress who had made poor James once more an exile. Nothing could exceed now her pity for ‘poor James.’ She forgot the darts with which she herself had slain him, and all that had been said to his discredit. He was the sufferer now, which was always enough to turn the balance of Miss Cherry’s thoughts.