‘The mist is rising o’er the mead, With silver hiding grass and reed; ‘Tis silent all, on hill and heath, The evening winds, they hardly breathe; What sudden breaks the silent charm, The echo wakes with wild alarm. With rapid, loud, and furious rattle, Sure ‘tis the voice of deadly battle, Bidding the rustic swain to fly Before his country’s enemy.’ ‘Did anybody ever hear of a sham fight in the evening?’ cried the soldier’s daughter indignantly. ‘There, I can’t see any more of it.’ ‘Give it to me, then.’ ‘You are welcome! Where did it come from? Let me look. C.H. Oh, did Constance Hacket write it? Nobody else could be so delicious, or so far superior to Milton.’ ‘You knew it all the time, and that was the reason you made game of it.’ ‘No, indeed it was not, Dolores. I did not guess. You should have told me at first.’ ‘You would have gone on about it all the same.’ ‘No, indeed, I hope not. I did not mean to vex you; but how was I to know it was so near your heart?’ ‘I ought to have known better than to have shown it to you! You are always laughing at her and me all over the house--and now--’ ‘Come, Dolly. I never meant to hurt your feelings. I will promise not to tell the others about it.’ No answer. There was something hard and swelling in Dolores’s throat. ‘Won’t that do?’ said Gillian. ‘You know I can’t say that I admire it, but I’m sorry I hurt you, and I’ll take care the others don’t tease you about it.’ Dolores made hardly any answer, but it was a sort of pacification, and Gillian said not a word to the younger ones. Still she thought it no breach of her promise, when they were all gone to bed, and she the sole survivor, to tell her mother how inadvertently she had affronted Dolores by cutting up the verses, before she knew whose they were. ‘I am sorry,’ said Lady Merrifield. ‘Anything that tends to keep Dolores aloof from us is a pity.’ ‘But, mama, I had no notion whose they were.’ ‘You saw that she was pleased with them.’ ‘Yes, but that was the more ridiculous. Fancy the evening star climbing up--up--you know in the sunset!’ ‘Portentous, certainly! Yet still I wish you could have found it in your heart to take advantage of any feeler towards sympathy.’ ‘How could I pretend to admire such stuff?’ ‘You need not pretend; but there are two ways of taking hold of a thing without being untrue. If you had been a little wiser and more forbearing you need not have given Dolores such a shock as would drive her in upon herself. Depend upon it, the older you grow, the more dangerous you will find it to begin by hitting the blots.’