That evening there was an interchange of visits, something in the old fashion. Edward thought he might come in, in the evening, when the public about would not be scandalised by the idea that he was able to visit his friends so soon after his father’s death; and Mr. Beresford said to himself that, surely he might go for a little to comfort his neighbour who was in trouble, and who had not herself been out of doors for these two long days. The young man and the older man crossed each other, but without meeting; and both of the visits were very pleasant. Miss Cherry was as kind to Edward as she had been cold to his mother. She got up to meet him and took his two hands in hers. She called him, inarticulately, her dear boy, and asked after his health tenderly, as if he had been ill. As for Cara, she did nothing but look at him with a wistful look, trying to read in his eyes what he felt; and when her aunt entered into the usual commonplaces about resignation to God’s will, Cara broke in almost abruptly, impatient even of this amiable fiction. ‘You forget what you were saying to-day,’ she said: ‘that Edward did not know his father, and therefore could not grieve as--I should.’ ‘That is quite true,’ he said, ‘and therefore it is a different kind of feeling. Not the grief that Cara would feel; but that painful sense of not being able to feel, which is almost worse. I never thought of my father--scarcely knew him. Some time, of course, we were to meet--that was all; and gratitude to him, or any attempt to repay him, was not in my thoughts. And now it is impossible ever, in any place, were one to go to the world’s end--or at any time, were one to live as long as Methuselah, to say a kind word to him, to try to make up to him a little. This is more painful than Cara’s worst grief would be, knowing she had done everything, made everything bright.’ ‘Oh, no, no!’ she said, putting up her hands. ‘Ah, yes, yes!’ he said, looking at her with melting eyes, softened and enlarged by the moisture in them, and smiling upon her. Cara, in her confusion, could not meet the look and the smile. ‘Oh, Edward,’ she said, ‘it is you who are the best of us all. I am not good, as you think me. I am a sham, like all the rest; but if there is one that is true----’ ‘Cara is foolish,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘I don’t know what is come to her, Edward. She talks as if nobody was to be relied upon; but I suppose she is at the age of fancy, when girls take things into their heads. I remember when I was your age, my darling, I had a great many fancies too. And I am afraid I have some still, though I ought to know better. I suppose you will take your mother away somewhere, Edward, for a little change?’ ‘I have not heard anything about it, Miss Cherry; but there will be one change, most likely, very important to me, if I settle to do it. I need not go out to India now--unless I please.’ ‘Oh, Edward, I am so glad; for, of course, you would not wish it--you did not wish it?’