bric-à-brac had lost all interest in the gathering mists of suffering and despondency--and then afterwards, in an interval of apparent improvement, had been carefully put together and placed on a shelf, high up, where its imperfections were not visible. It was the sight of it which had kept Beresford from going into the room. He would have made the effort for Cara’s sake, he thought, but that this relic, so connected with the last chapter of all, had thrust that recollection upon him. He had never entered poor Annie’s drawing-room since the week she died. ‘Well, Cara, my dear, I am glad to see you,’ he said, putting his arm round his daughter, and kissing her. ‘You must forgive me for not coming upstairs. How you have grown!--or rather, you have become a young lady all at once. I don’t know that you are much taller.’ ‘No; I have not grown,’ said Cara. ‘I suppose the long dress makes a difference. It is that, perhaps.’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sit down, my dear; dinner waits. I have had a long journey, and I want something. I never eat much when I am travelling. I came by Dieppe, which is a route I detest. Ah, I forgot! You have never been across the Channel, yet, Cara.’ ‘No.’ They both recollected why--and that ‘the next expedition’ after those long honeymooning travels was to have been accompanied by ‘the child.’ Cara remembered this with a certain bitterness; her father merely with melancholy sentiment. ‘Ah!’ he said, vaguely, ‘we must mend that--some day. And how are the aunts? I can fancy that my sister looks just as she always did. She and I are at the age when people change little. But Aunt Charity? she is getting quite an old woman now--over seventy. Have you been dull in the country, Cara? or have they petted you so much that you will feel it dull to be here?’ He looked at her with a smile which lit up his face, and touched her heart just a little; but the question touched something else than her heart--her pride and sense of importance. ‘I was not dull,’ she said. ‘One is not dull when one has something to do--and is with those whom one loves.’ ‘Ah!’ he said, looking at her with a little curiosity; ‘that is a better way of putting it, certainly,’ he added, with a smile.