Once more, but for the last time, we are at Kilkieran. To a dreary day of incessant rain succeeded an evening still drearier. Wild gusts swept along the little shore, and shook the frail windows and ill-fitting doors of the cottages, while foam and sea-drift were wafted over the roofs, settling like snow-flakes on the tall cliffs above them. And yet it was midsummer! By the almanac the time was vouched to be the opening of the season; a fact amply corroborated by the fashionable assemblage then enjoying the hospitalities of Mrs. Cronan's tea-table. There they were, with a single exception, the same goodly company already presented to the reader in an early chapter of our story. We have already mentioned the great changes which time had worked in the appearance of the little watering-place. The fostering care of proprietorship withdrawn, the ornamental villa of the Martins converted into a miserable village inn, the works of the pier and harbor suspended, and presenting in their unfinished aspect the dreary semblance of ruin and decay,--all conspired with the falling fortunes of the people to make the scene a sad one. Little evidence of this decline, however, could be traced in the aspect of that pleasant gathering, animated with all its ancient taste for whist, scandal, and shrimps; their appetite for such luxuries seeming rather to have increased than diminished by years. Not that we presume to say they could claim any immunity against the irrevocable decrees of age. Unhappily, the confession may be deemed not exactly in accordance with gallantry; but it is strictly true, time had no more forgotten the living than the inanimate accessories of the picture. Miss Busk, of the Emporium, had grown more sour and more stately. The vinegar of her temperament was verging upon verjuice, and the ill opinion of mankind experience enforced had written itself very legibly on her features. The world had not improved upon her by acquaintance. Not so Captain Bodkin; fatter and more wheezy than ever, he seemed to relish life rather more than when younger. He had given up, too, that long struggle with himself about bathing, and making up his mind to suffer no “sea-change;” he was, therefore, more cheerful than before. As for Mrs. Cronan, “the little comforts she was used to” had sorely diminished by the pressure of the times, and, in consequence, she drew unlimited drafts upon the past to fill up the deficiencies of the present. Strange enough is it, that the faults and follies of society are just as adhesive ingredients as its higher qualities! These people had grown so used to each other in all their eccentric ways and oddities, that they had become fond of them; like a pilot long accustomed to rocks and sandbanks, they could only steer their course where there was something to avoid!