Several events of importance, events influencing more or less the well-being of certain individuals connected with this story, had occurred during the swiftly-passing months which had changed the year from midsummer to winter. To begin with: Arthur Vavasour (who after his farewell meeting in Danescourt grounds had not again seen Honor Beacham) had, according to expectation, been made one with Sophy Duberly before the altar. In less than a month from his coming of age, the marriage ceremony was celebrated with becoming pomp in London, the “happy pair” departing immediately afterwards for the Continent, bent--according to the newspapers--on a “lengthened tour abroad.” Nor did any long period elapse before Horace Vavasour also broke the weary chain that bound him to home. He had yearned for the long-hoped-for emancipation; but he experienced--a good deal to his surprise--when the time came for bidding adieu to Gillingham, very little of the exultation which he might naturally have expected to have been his portion. All unknown to himself, the home-raised lad had grown attached to the old place. The grumblings and complainings, the discontent, and the longing for change, were more a habit with him than the result of conviction; and when the hour of parting came, and he looked back on the tearful faces of his two sisters, standing gazing after him on the steps of the marble portico, Horace would gladly have given up all his cherished hopes to remain with those dear fellow-victims in the old home that he was leaving. As was only natural, however, those regrets were not of long duration. Lady Millicent had not made home so sweet to the children committed to her care, that they should continue for a lengthened period to pine for the few blessings which that home afforded. By swift degrees, regret for the past ceased to have a place in the memory of the absent one; whilst the recollection of the many privations, the dulness, and the tyrannous rules of far-away Gillingham, remained fixed, as with a sculptor’s chisel, on his heart for ever. Kate was during that, to her, dull Christmas time, the only daughter of the house at home, for Rhoda (an extremely unusual proceeding) had been allowed to accept of a pressing invitation from the Guernseys to spend a month with them in Paris. “Two women were grinding at the mill,” Kate said merrily to her brother, “and a jolly grind it was too! And it’s just as well that one was taken, and a great bore that the other--meaning me--was left behind.” Horace, who had very good-naturedly given up several far pleasanter engagements for his sister’s sake, and who purposed spending a dull week at the Chace with the kind purpose of enlivening poor Kate’s worse than solitude, pinched her cheek playfully.