I need not say it was Lumsden who saw her to her own door on the other side of the square. No one there would have been such a spoil-sport as to interfere with his right whatever old Sir Robert might say. They stole out in a lull of the leave-taking, when the most of the people were gone, and others lingered for just this “one more” for which the girls pleaded. The misty moonlight filled the square, and made all the waiting carriages look like ghostly equipages bent upon some mystic journey in the middle of the night. They paused at the corner of the square, where the road led down to the pleasant Meadows, all white and indefinite in the mist, spreading out into the distance. Lumsden would fain have drawn her away into a little further discussion, wandering under the trees, where they would have met nobody at that hour; but Lily was not bold enough to walk in the Meadows between two and three in the morning. She was willing, however, to walk up and down a little on the other side of the square before she said good-night. Nobody saw them there, except some of the coachmen on the boxes, who were too sleepy to mind who passed, and Robina, who had silently opened the door and was waiting for her mistress. Robina was several years older than Lily, and had relinquished all thoughts of a sweetheart in her own person. She stood concealing herself in the doorway, ready, if any sound should be made within which denoted wakefulness on the part of Sir Robert, to snatch her young lady even from her lover’s arms; and watching, with very mingled feelings, the pair half seen--the white figure congenial to the moonlight, and the dark one just visible, like a prop to a flower. “Lily’s her name and Lily’s her nature,” said Robina to herself, with a little moisture in her kind eyes; “but, oh! is he worthy of her, is he worthy of her?” This was too deep a question to be solved by any thing but time and proof, which are the last things to satisfy the heart. At last there was a lingering parting, and Lily stole, in her white wraps, all white from top to toe, into the dark and silent house. CHAPTER II