turned over her part of it deeply and much in her mind that night, after the conversation with her mother which I have recorded. She asked herself, had she any right to deprive Herbert of a friend who would be of use to him for any foolish pride of hers? She could keep herself apart very easily, Reine thought, in her pride. She was no longer very necessary to Herbert. He did not want her as he used to do. She could keep apart, and trouble no one; and why should she, for any ridiculous self-consciousness, ghost of sentiment dead and gone, deprive her brother of such a friend? She said “No!” to herself vehemently, as she lay and pondered the question in the dark, when she ought to have been asleep. Everard was nothing, and could be nothing to her, but her cousin; it would be necessary to see him as such, but not to see much of him; and whatever he might be else, he was a gentleman, and would never have the bad taste to intrude upon her if he saw she did not want him. Besides, there was no likelihood that he would wish it; therefore Reine made up her mind that no exaggerated sentimentality on her part, no weak personal feeling, should interfere with Herbert’s good. She would keep herself out of the way. But the reader will scarcely require to be told that the letter written under this inspiration was not exactly the kind of letter which it flatters a young man to receive from a girl to whom he has once been so closely drawn as Everard had been to Reine, and to whom he still feels a visionary link, holding him fast in spite of himself. He received the cold epistle, in which Reine informed him simply where they were, adding a message from her brother: “If you are coming to the Continent, Herbert wishes me to say he would be glad to see you here,” in a scene and on a day which was as unlike as it is possible to imagine to the soft Italian weather, and genial Southern beach, on which Reine had concocted it. As it happened, the moment was one of the most lively and successful in Everard’s somewhat calm country life. He, who often felt himself insignificant, and sometimes slighted, was for that morning at least in the ascendant. Very cold weather had set in suddenly, and in cold weather Everard became a person of great importance in his neighborhood. I will tell you why. His little house, which was on the river, as I have already said, and in Summer a very fine starting-point for water-parties, possessed unusually picturesque and well-planted grounds; and in the heart of a pretty bit of plantation which belonged to him was an ornamental piece of water, very prettily surrounded by trees and sloping lawns, which froze quickly, as the water was shallow, and was the pleasantest skating ground for miles round. Need I say more to show how a frost made Everard instantly a man of consequence? On the day on which Reine’s epistle arrived at Water Beeches, which was the name of his place, it was a beautiful English frost, such as we see but rarely nowadays.