“Do you think that affair ever went very deep?” I ventured to ask. “It seemed to me that she looked miserable during her engagement, and happy when it was broken off.” “Quite so,” said Lady Probyn; “I noticed the same thing. It was nothing but a mistake. They were not in the least suited to each other. By-the-by, I hear that Derrick Vaughan is married.” “Derrick?” I exclaimed; “oh, no, that is a mistake. It is merely one of the hundred and one reports that are for ever being set afloat about him.” “But I saw it in a paper, I assure you,” said Lady Probyn, by no means convinced. “Ah, that may very well be; they were hard up for a paragraph, no doubt, and inserted it. But, as for Derrick, why, how should he marry? He has been madly in love with Miss Merrifield ever since our cruise in the Aurora.” Lady Probyn made an inarticulate exclamation. “Poor fellow!” she said, after a minute’s thought; “that explains much to me.” She did not explain her rather ambiguous remark, and before long our tete-a-tete was interrupted. Now that my friend was a full-fledged barrister, he and I shared chambers, and one morning about a month after this garden party, Derrick came in with a face of such radiant happiness that I couldn’t imagine what good luck had befallen him. “What do you think?” he exclaimed; “here’s an invitation for a cruise in the Aurora at the end of August--to be nearly the same party that we had years ago,” and he threw down the letter for me to read. Of course there was special mention of “my niece, Miss Merrifield, who has just returned from India, and is ordered plenty of sea-air.” I could have told that without reading the letter, for it was written quite clearly in Derrick’s face. He looked ten years younger, and if any of his adoring readers could have seen the pranks he was up to that morning in our staid and respectable chambers, I am afraid they would no longer have spoken of him “with ‘bated breath and whispering humbleness.” As it happened, I, too, was able to leave home for a fortnight at the end of August; and so our party in the Aurora really was the same, except that we were all several years older, and let us hope wiser, than on the previous occasion. Considering all that had intervened, I was surprised that Derrick was not more altered; as for Freda, she was decidedly paler than when we first met her, but before long sea-air and happiness wrought a wonderful transformation in her. In spite of the pessimists who are for ever writing books, even writing novels (more shame to them), to prove that there is no such thing as happiness in the world, we managed every one of us heartily to enjoy our cruise. It seemed indeed true that: “Green leaves and blossoms, and sunny warm weather, And singing and loving all come back together.”