their agitation, the first being actually shown up into the drawing-room while they still stood together talking in their scarcely subsiding excitement. This was more than the others could bear. Mrs. Meredith indeed met her visitors with her usual smiles, with hands stretched out, with all the air of soft and kind interest in them which bound her friends so close to her; the air of agitation about her only increased the kindness of her looks; but the three others were not so courageous. They all forsook her, stealing away one by one. Mr. Beresford went to his library, where he had so many things to think of. Cara and Edward, stealing away one after the other, met on the stairs. ‘Will you come into the Square,’ he said, ‘till it is time for my train?’ The Square was a spot where they had played together when they were children. It had been avoided by both of them without any reason given: now they went out and took refuge in it, where the little ladies and gentlemen of the Square were still playing. They wandered demurely under the flowery shrubs and those kind trees which do not despise London, their hearts beating softly yet loud, their young lives in a tender harmony. They seemed to be walking back into the chapter of their childhood and to see themselves playing hide and seek among the bushes. ‘You used to look just like that,’ Edward said, pointing to a pretty child in a white sun-bonnet with her lap full of daisies, who looked up at them with serious blue eyes as they passed. Cara was not so very much older, and yet what a world of youthful experience lay between her and this child. Then naturally they began to talk of what had happened to their knowledge, and of what might have happened which they did not know. ‘And you think he really loved her,’ Edward said, his voice at this word taking a reverential tone. ‘He must indeed--or else----. But was he in earnest--he was always so full of levity? And where can they have gone?’ ‘He did not mean to have gone for more than the day. It must have been some accident. He would not have done anything again to get her scolded. _I_ scolded him for it before.’ ‘You scolded him. I wish you would scold me, Cara,’ said Edward, looking at her. ‘You never talk to me as you used to talk to him. What bad feelings you used to rouse in my mind--you who are as good as an angel! hatred and malice, and all uncharitableness. I went very near to hating my brother. Poor Oswald, I shall stand by him now through thick and thin.’ ‘I am glad of that,’ said Cara, thankfully ignoring what went before. ‘That is your doing too, like the other; Cara--there seems so many things that I want to say to you.’