“Mrs. Gower has asked him to go on the coaching party,” said Arthur, secretly flattered at being thought by Wemyss worthy of hearing that gentleman’s opinion. He made no reply to this, but frowned obviously. Pretty soon the others came out and joined them, and they had cognac and coffee; the ladies, too, were out on the terrace, at its other end, attracted by the beauty of the night; and gradually the two groups came together and intermingled. But it was the man’s hour; and they made bold to keep their cigars, even when, as soon happened, each one joined his fair one and took to walking with her. Wemyss walked with Mrs. Gower, Birmingham with Miss Farnum, Van Kull with Mrs. Hay, Charlie Townley with Miss Duval, and Mrs. Malgam with Si Starbuck. Arthur found himself with Miss Lenoir. She was a pretty girl, with fine black hair and gray eyes, and an ivory-like complexion; and her dress was the perfection of style and enlightened civilization. It was the most glorious night; a night made for the imaginative and idle, for those who have read the world’s literature and looked at paintings, and whose women are fair ladies, bravely dressed. The great pathway of the river lay open to the dark sky, walled by ebon mountain-masses; to the east the azure shaded into blue, where the stars were sown less freely, tremulous, luminous with the rising moon. The moon’s light was pleasant, too, on the figure of the pretty girl beside him; and the others, as they passed and repassed, seemed like the gay ladies of Boccaccio’s garden, and looked, each pair, as if they had been lovers. Down in the factory village, too, the night was fine; perhaps a few old men, smoking, enjoyed it, dumbly, as such people do. For these do not comment, in diaries or print, upon such things, nor analyze the moods they bring. But most of the women who were stirring made only a convenience of the moonlight, lighting the uncertain hazards of the dirty street; and the young men, smoking and drinking, were quite unconscious of it, for tobacco and whiskey had more direct action upon their consciousness, besides having a money cost, which the beauty of the night had not. But here, too, were some few young men wandering afield with young women, and perhaps upon these the moonlight had its unconscious effect. Up at Mrs. Gower’s the love-making, though not inartistically done, was rather like a play; here it was more earnest. Yet, as it seemed to Lionel Derwent, there was not so much difference between these two places, laying aside mere dress and manner, as there should have been.