“There, there, sir,” said Kate, proudly, “your very request is an answer to yourself. We, here, who have known each other for some time, have had opportunities of interchanging opinions and sentiments, cannot understand a simple matter in the same way, nor regard it in the same light, how do you suppose, that millions separated by distance, habits and pursuits, can attain to what we, with our advantages, have failed in. Can you not see that we are not the same people. “But need our dissimilitudes sever--may they not be made rather ties to bind us more closely together,” said he, tenderly. “Equality for the future, even if we obtained it, cannot eradicate the memory of the past. The penal laws----” “Come--come. There is no longer any thing there. See the University for instance--by-the-bye,” and here Travers caught eagerly at the opportunity of escape, “what of Herbert, is not this near the time for his examination?” “The very day, the 28th of February,” said she, reading from a small memorandum book. “It is six weeks yesterday since we have seen him--poor boy!” “How pale and sickly he looked too. I wish with all my heart, he had not set his mind so eagerly on College success.” “It is only for women, to live without ambition of one sort or other;” replied Kate, sadly, “and a very poor kind of existence it is, I assure you.” “What if we were to make a party, and meet him as he comes out? We might persuade him to join us at dinner, too.” “Well thought of, Fred,” said Sir Marmaduke. “Herbert seems to have forgotten us latterly, and knowing his anxiety to succeed, I really scrupled at the thought of idling him.” “It is very kind of you all,” said Kate, with one of her sweetest smiles, “to remember the poor student, and there is nothing I should like better than the plan you propose.” “We must find out the hour they leave the Hall,” said Frederick. “I heard him say it was at four o'clock,” said Sybella, timidly, venturing for the first time to interpose a word in the conversation. “You have the best memory in the world, Sybella,” whispered Kate in her friend's ear, and simple as the words were, they called the blush to her cheek in an instant. The morning passed away in the thousand little avocations which affluence and ease have invented, to banish “ennui,” and render life always interesting. A few minutes before four o'clock, the splendid equipage of Sir Marmaduke Travers, in all the massive perfection of its London appointments, drew up at the outer gate of the University; the party preferring to enter the courts on foot.