Philip went upstairs with the girls after this, into the pink drawing-room, where he sat all the evening, forgetting his dinner. He had come to see Lucy, but it was Katie Russell who took the conversation in hand; and as he was a very staid young man, not used to the lighter graces of conversation, Katie’s chatter and the perpetual variations of her pretty face were a sort of revelation to Philip. He was entirely carried beyond himself and all his purposes by this new being. Lucy sat tranquilly in her corner and assisted, but did little more. She was amused to see her grave cousin laughed at and subdued, and the evening flew over them, as evenings rarely fly in more edifying intercourse. The talk and laughter were at their height, when Katie, going to the piano to sing “just one more song,” suddenly discovered that it was too dark to see her music, and stopped short with a cry of dismay. “Why, it is dark! and I never noticed-- What will Mrs. Stone think? I came over only for half an hour, and I am staying all the night. Lucy, good-bye, I must go now.” “But you have promised me this song,” Philip said; “there are candles to be had.” “And you are not going to run away like that. Jock and I will go home with you,” said Lucy, “and, perhaps, Philip will come, too.” Philip thanked his cousin with his eyes, and the song was sung; and then the little party got under way. It was a warm still night, with a little autumnal mist softening all the edges of the horizon, and mild stars shining through with a kind yet pensive softness. Philip Rainy had been admirable in all the relations of life. He had done his duty by his parents, by his scholars, and by himself; he had combined a prudent sense of his own interests with justice to everybody, and kindness to those who had a claim upon him; and the life which lay behind him was one which any well-regulated young man might have looked back upon with pleasure. But all at once it seemed to the young school-master that it was the dreariest of desert tracks, and that up to this moment he had never lived at all. He had never understood before what the balmy atmosphere of a summer night meant, or how it was that the stars got soft, and came to bear a personal relation to the eyes that looked at them. What did it mean? He had come to see Lucy, but he barely perceived Lucy. All the world and all his interests seemed suddenly concentrated into the little circle in which that one little figure was standing. He stood beside her, drawn to her by a soft inexplainable influence. He walked beside her as in a dream, everything was sweet--the night air that lifted her bright hair and tossed it about her forehead; the gorse-bush that clung to her dress and had to be disengaged, every prickle giving him another delicious prick as he pulled them away. Whether he was dreaming, or whether he had gone clean out of his senses, or whether this was a new life of which he had never been conscious before, Philip did not know.