'And I suppose in the evening you will join in the dumb charades, and play hide-and-seek in the garden, all among spiders and cockchafers.' 'I will do anything I am told to do,' answered Brian, cheerily. 'But I think the season of the cockchafer is over.' 'What has become of Dr. Rylance?' asked Bessie, looking about her as if she had only that moment missed him. 'I think he went back to the farm for his horse,' said Urania. 'I suppose he found our juvenile sports rather depressing.' 'Well, he paid us a compliment in coming at all,' answered Bessie, 'so we must forgive him for getting tired of us.' The drive home was very merry, albeit Bessie and her friend were to part next morning--Ida to go back to slavery. They were both young enough to be able to enjoy the present hour, even on the edge of darkness. Bessie clasped her friend's hand as they sat side by side in the landau. 'You must come to us at Christmas,' she whispered: 'I shall ask mother to invite you.' Brian was full of talk and gaiety as they drove home through the dusk. He was very different from that ideal Brian of Ida's girlish fancy--the Brian who embodied all her favourite attributes, and had all the finest qualities of the hero of romance. But he was an agreeable, well-bred young man, bringing with him that knowledge of life and the active world which made his talk seem new and enlightening after the strictly local and domestic intellects of the good people with whom she had been living. With the family at The Knoll conversation had been bounded by Winchester on one side, and Romsey on the other. There was an agreeable freshness in the society of a young man who could talk of all that was newest in European art and literature, and who knew how the world was being governed. But this fund of information was hinted at rather than expressed. To-night Mr. Wendover seemed most inclined to mere nonsense talk--the lively nothings that please children. Of himself and his Norwegian adventures he said hardly anything. 'I suppose when a man has travelled so much he gets to look upon strange countries as a matter of course,' speculated Ida. 'If I had just come from Norway, I should talk of nothing else.' The dumb-charades and hide-and-seek were played, but only by the lower orders, as Bessie called her younger brothers and sisters. Ida strolled in the moonlit garden with Mr. Wendover, Bessie, Urania, and Mr. Ratcliffe, a very juvenile curate, who was Bessie's admirer and slave. Urania had no particular admirer. She felt that every one at Kingthorpe must needs behold her with mute worship; but there was no one so audacious as to give expression to the feeling; no one of sufficient importance to be favoured with her smiles. She looked forward to her first season in London next year, and then she would be called upon to make her selection.