It was autumn; the end of the season at which the Hill was most beautiful. It had its loveliness too in winter, when the wonderful branching of the trees--all that symmetry of line and network which summer hides with loving decorations--was made visible against the broader background of the skies, which gained infinitude from the dropping of those evanescent clouds of foliage. But the common mind rejected the idea of the Hill in winter as that place of bliss which it was acknowledged to be during the warmer half of the year. In autumn, however, the ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’ of the great plain, the tints of fervid colour which came to the trees, the soft hazy distances and half-mournful brightness of the waning season, gave the place a special beauty. There were still abundant flowers fringing the lawn; blazing red salvias, geraniums, all the warm-hued plants that reach the ‘fall;’ big hollyhocks flaunting behind backs, and languishing dahlias. Some late roses lingered still; the air was sweet with the faint soft perfume of mignonette; petunias, just on the point of toppling over into decay, made a flutter of white and lilac against the walls, and here and there a bunch of belated honeysuckle, or cluster of jessamine stars out of date, threw themselves forth upon the trellis. It was on the sweetest mellow autumnal day, warm as July, yet misty as October, that the Miss Beresfords had their last garden-party for Cara. All their parties were for Cara; but this was especially hers, her friends far and near coming to take leave of her, as her life at the Hill terminated. ‘She goes just at the proper moment,’ Miss Charity said, sitting out on the lawn in her white crape shawl, receiving her visitors, with St. George’s and all the plain beyond shining through the autumn branches like a picture laid at her feet. ‘She takes the full good of us to the last, and when winter comes, which lays us bare, she will be off with the other birds. She lasts just a little longer than the swallows,’ said the old lady with a laugh. ‘But you can’t wonder, dear Mrs. Beresford, that she should wish to go to her father. What can come up to a father?’ said Mrs. Burchell, meaning, it is to be supposed, to smooth over the wound. Miss Charity lifted her big green fan ominously in her hand. It was closed, and it might have inflicted no slight blow; and, of all things in the world, it would have pleased the old lady most to bring it down smartly upon that fat hand, stuffed desperately into a tight purple glove, and very moist and discoloured by the confinement, which rested on the admirable clergywoman’s knee. Meanwhile Roger Burchell, who was bold, and did not miss his chances, had got Cara away from the croquet players and the talk, on pretence of showing her something. ‘I am coming to see you in town,’ he said. ‘It is as easy to go there as to come here, and I shan’t care for coming here when you are gone. So you need not say good-bye to me.’