"I can't fancy O'Boyneville at a picnic," said a listless young gentleman who was amongst the new arrivals. "I can't fancy him any where except in the law courts. One sometimes meets him at men's dinners, but he never seems to enjoy himself unless he can talk _shop_, and he looks at the other fellows as if he'd like to cross-examine them." The usual meanderings on the terrace outside the drawing-room windows, with which the younger members of the Nasedale party were wont to beguile the warm summer evenings, were impossible to-night, for at nine o'clock a violent clap of thunder shook the roofs and chimneys of the old mansion, and pretty little feminine shriekings and screechings fluttered the tranquillity of the party. The young ladies who were not afraid of the lightning made a merit of not being afraid; and the young ladies who were afraid made a merit of being horribly frightened, and shivered and started in the most bewitching manner at sight of every flash. And one young lady who had written a volume of poetry, in which a weak solution of L. E. L. was artfully intermingled with a still weaker solution of Mrs. Browning, stood before a window and exclaimed about the grandeur and sublimity of the spectacle. Cecil, sitting quietly at work under a reading-lamp, was rather rejoiced when she heard the violent downpour of rain which succeeded the storm. "Mr. O'Boyneville will scarcely come to-night, at any rate," she thought. There was a great deal of lamentation about the rain, and considerable discussion as to whether it augured ill or well for the morrow. It was a blessing to get the storm over. But then the grass would be damp, most likely, and so on. The young ladies thought of their delicate boots, their dainty dresses. "My hat cost two guineas and a half," murmured one damsel to a sympathising confidante. "A ruche of peacock's feathers, you know, dear; and the sweetest mother-of-pearl butterfly, and a tiny, tiny green-chenille bird's-nest, with three gold eggs in it, at the side--and one shower of rain would utterly spoil it." The rain came thicker and faster. Nothing short of a hurricane would serve to dry the grass after such a storm. But Cecil did not think of the picnic; she only congratulated herself upon the improbability that Mr. O'Boyneville would care to travel in such weather. "No chance of O'Boyneville," said Mr. Mountjoy, as he stood before the fire which he had ordered to be lighted since the advent of the rain. "I told him to write and announce his coming, so that I might send a vehicle over to the station to meet him. It's a ten-mile drive, you know, and there's very seldom so much as a fly to be had at that miserable little station. However, the last London post is in, and there's no letter from O'Boyneville."