‘Her family was round her bed, my darling, praying for her life, asking nothing but to get her back. You don’t consider her children, and her husband. Don’t let us talk of it. It makes me think of jumping into this wicked lake, and getting it all over.’ ‘Ah! do you feel that _too_? It is wicked, James; how dare you think such things? Take me back home; yes, home. I am tired of this place. It is all very well when it is fine, but winter is coming. To-morrow let us go home.’ He took her to the shore with a few long sweeps of the oars, glad in his heart of that decision. He, too, was very tired of the place; more tired of the eternal shining than of the storm, and it was getting late in the year for the Alps. Nevertheless it was by the Alps that this capricious woman insisted upon returning, and they had something very near an accident in the snows which roused and pleased her mightily. After the excitement, however, nothing would satisfy her but to rush to London with the utmost speed. She objected to stay even a single night in Paris. She had been seized with a passion of longing for the humdrum Square. Miss Cherry brought Cara up from Sunninghill to be at home to receive her mother. But the pair of travellers had stolen a march upon the household, and instead of waiting to be received in a proper manner in the evening, with dinner ready and everything comfortable, had arrived at an absurd hour in the morning, before the maids were out of bed, and when there was nothing prepared in the house. Cook herself came, much aggrieved, to tell Miss Cherry this, while Cara ran upstairs to her mother’s room. ‘I don’t make no doubt as folks get very fanciful when they’re ill; but still, Miss, there’s reason in all things. At six o’clock in the morning, and we not up, as why should we be, not thinking of nothing of the sort, and not a thing in the house?’ ‘It was hard, cook,’ said the sympathetic Miss Cherry; ‘but then you know my brother had a right to come to his own house when he pleased. Coming home is not like going anywhere else. But I hope Mrs. Beresford is looking better?’ ‘Better!’ said cook, spreading out her hands; and Sarah, the housemaid, shook her head and put her apron to her eyes. ‘Dear, dear!’ said kind Miss Cherry, appalled by their tears; ‘but travelling all night makes any one look ill. I shall not go up until she has had a good look at her child. Miss Cara is like a little rose.’ ‘So she is, Miss, bless her!’ assented the maids; and Cherry had to wait for a long time in the library before even her brother came to her. One thing which struck her with great surprise was, that there were no boxes about half emptied, in which precious fragilities had been packed in straw and wicker cases. The Buen Retiro cup was the only thing they had bought, and that was among Mrs. Beresford’s things--smashed; and they had both forgotten its very existence. No more wonderful sign could have been of the changed times.