"Go, without paying my promised visit, Miss Vernon!" was my only reply, but I suppose the tone in which it was spoken, expressed how impossible such an omission was to me, for she said with a smile, as she drew away her hand, "I suppose, then, you would not have liked to leave us, _sans adieu_; but grandpapa, Captain Egerton has barely time to make his toilet, it is just six o'clock." The Colonel, with old fashioned _empressement_, lighted me to my chamber, a little dark-panelled cell with some rude remnants of carving here and there, and one small window sunk deep in the wall. A cheerful fire blazed in what had once been a wide chimney, but which was now walled up into reasonable dimensions. "This is the oldest part of the house," said my host; "we used it as a sort of lumber room till Kate and Nurse decided on trying to make it habitable for you; we none of us liked the idea of despatching you every night to an hotel, at this time of the year particularly; have you every thing you want?" I thought the Priory Cottage never looked so delightfully homelike as in its winter aspect; and the pleasant candle-light dinner, to the agreeability of which Mrs. O'Toole added largely, joining in the conversation with greater ease than ever, pressing any particularly well cooked dish, as earnestly on me as if I too had been her nursling. Cormac sat gravely by Kate, accepting the bits she occasionally offered him with dignified condescension. "On Sundays and a few great occasions, such as the present," she said with a smile, "Cormac was admitted to the dining room, but the drawing room was forbidden ground to him, he knew it quite well." We soon adjourned to the drawing room, and as I stood on the hearth rug sipping my tea, and looking at Kate and her grandfather, sitting at opposite sides of the table, both so distinguished in their looks and manners, yet both so unlike the common herd of mere well bred people, I kept down the bitter sighs that oppressed my heart as the thought, "You must leave them and for ever," seemed to burn and fix itself indelibly on my brain. After some enquiries about the Winters and Gilpin, who, I was sorry to hear, had not been so well, Miss Vernon observed I still looked pale and thin. "You certainly suffered for your generous effort to save our poor friend," she added; "I can never forget your rushing back under the tottering ruins, and that awful crash!" She shuddered. "Yes, indeed, Egerton, you look a little haggard; don't you feel strong?" enquired the Colonel. "Why you see, Colonel, I have been a good deal cut up about all this business, and to say the truth I do not like leaving England." "That must be because you are still suffering from the debility of indisposition," said Miss Vernon, "or such a lover of excitement as you are would be enchanted at the idea of India, and its tiger hunts, and cave temples, with a possibility of shooting or being shot."