“My dear father, and my dear Kenneth, and you too, Nellie, pardon me. I have been unmannerly, grossly so. I brought you here, Kenneth, to spend a pleasant evening, and help us to spend one, and some evil genius--a _daimon_ that I carry about with me, and cannot always whip into good behavior--has had possession of me for the last half-hour. It was he that spoke in me, and not my father’s son, who, were he true to the lessons and example of his parent, would as soon think of committing suicide as a breach of hospitality or good manners. Now, as you are antiquarians, I leave you a little to compare notes, while I take Fairy out to trip upon the green, and console her for my passing heresy with orthodoxy and Tupper, who, I need not assure you, is her favorite poet, as he is of all true English country damsels. There is the moon beginning to rise; and there is a certain melting, a certain watery, quality about Tupper admirably adapted to moonlight.” The rest of the evening passed more pleasantly. After a little we all went out on the lawn, and sat there together. The moonlight nights of the English summer are very lovely. That night was as a thousand such, yet it seemed to me that I had never felt the solemn beauty of nature so deeply or so sensibly before. S. Wilfrid’s shone out high and gray and solemn in the moon. Through the yew-trees of the priory down below gleamed the white tombstones of the churchyard. A streak of silver quivering through the land marked the wandering course of the Leigh. And high up among the beeches and the elms sat we, the odors of the afternoon still lingering on the air, the melody of a nightingale near by wooing the heart of the night with its mystic notes, and the moonlight shimmering on drowsy trees and slumbering foliage that not a breath in all the wide air stirred. “There is a soft quiet in our English nights, a kind of home feeling about them, that makes them very lovable, and that I have experienced nowhere else,” said Kenneth. “Oh! I am so glad to hear you say that, Mr. Goodal.” “May I ask why, Miss Herbert?” “Well, I hardly know. Because, I suppose, I am so very English.” “So is Tupper, and Fairy swears by Tupper. At least she would, if she swore at all,” remarked her brother, whose hair was pulled for his pains. “Were you ever abroad, Miss Herbert?” “Never; papa wished to take me often, but I refused, because I suppose again I am so very English.” “Too English to face sea-sickness,” said her brother. “I believe the fault is mine, Mr. Goodal,” said her father. “You see the gout never leaves me for long together. I am liable at any time to an attack; and gout is a bad companion on foreign travel. It is bad enough at home, as Nellie finds, who insists on being my only nurse; and I am so selfish that I have not the heart to let her go, and I believe she has hardly the heart to leave me.”