Among the guests were two or three reporters of society papers from London, whom Craven Black, with an eye to the publicity of his glory, had invited down to Hawkhurst. These gentlemen danced and supped and wined, and in the pauses of these exercises wrote down glowing descriptions of the festivities, elaborate details of the ladies’ dresses, and ecstatic little eulogies of the bride’s beauty and connection with the Wynde family, and of the groom’s pedigree, stating the precise value of Craven Black’s prospects of a succession to his cousin, Viscount Torrimore. The aunt of the bride, Mrs. Hyde of Bloomsbury Square, was not present. She lay indeed at the point of death, a fact which Mrs. Craven Black judiciously confined to her own breast, the news having reached her that morning as she was dressing for her bridal. At twelve o’clock, midnight, fire-works were displayed on the lawn. They lasted over half an hour, and were very creditable. After they had finished, carriages were ordered, and the house guests departed in a steady stream until all were gone. The tenantry and villagers departed to their homes on foot or in wagons, as they had come. The colored lanterns were taken down from the trees; the musicians went away, and the lights one by one died out of the great mansion. The bridal pair were to remain a week at Hawkhurst, and were then to go to Wynde Heights, the dower house of the baronet’s widow, and it had been arranged that Neva should accompany her step-mother. Rufus Black was to be a member of the party also, and much was hoped by Mr. and Mrs. Craven Black from the enforced propinquity of the young couple. Silence succeeded to the late noise, confusion and merriment--a silence the more profound by contrast with what had preceded. The household had retired. Neva had long since dismissed her maid and gone to bed, thinking sadly of her father. Even before the last carriage had rolled away, Neva had fallen asleep, not-withstanding her wrapt musings concerning her father, and as the hours went on, and darkness and silence fell, that sleep had deepened into a strange and almost breathless slumber. But suddenly she sprang up, broad awake, her eyes starting, a cold dew on her forehead, a wild cry upon her lips. She stared around her with a look of terror. The white curtains of her bed were fluttering in the breeze from her open window, and around her lay the thick gloom of her chamber. Her voice called through the darkness in a wild, piercing wail: “Oh, papa, papa! I dreamed--ah, was it a dream?--that he still lives! I saw him, pale and ghastly, at the door of a hut among the Indian hills, and I heard his voice calling the names: ‘Octavia! Neva!’ He is not dead--he is not dead! So surely as I live, I believe that papa too is alive! Oh, my father, my father!” CHAPTER XXI. A SCENE IN INDIA.