Everard stood smiling, waving his hand to them as they drove away. “Madcaps!” he said to himself, “always with something on hand!” as he went slowly home, watching the last red gleam of the sun disappear behind the trees. It was getting colder and colder every moment, the chilliest of December nights; but the young man, in his glow of exercise and pleasure, did not take any notice of this. He went into his cosey little library, where a bright fire was burning, and where, even there in his own particular sanctum, the disturbing presence of those gay visitors was apparent. They had taken down some of his books from his shelves, and they had scattered the cushions of his sofa round the fire, where a circle of them had evidently been seated. There is a certain amused curiosity in a young man’s thoughts as to the doings and the sayings, when by themselves, of those mysterious creatures called girls. What were they talking about while they chatted round that fire, _his_ fire, where, somehow, some subtle difference in the atmosphere betokened their recent presence? He sat down with a smile on his face, and that flattered sense of general importance and acceptability in his mind, and took Reine’s letter out of his pocket. It was perhaps not the most suitable state of mind in which to read the chilly communication of Reine. Its effect upon him, however, was not at all chilly. It made him hot with anger. He threw it down on the table when he had read it, feeling such a letter to be an insult. Go to Cannes to be of use, forsooth, to Herbert! a kind of sick-nurse, he supposed, or perhaps keeper, now that he could go out, to the inexperienced young fellow. Everard bounced up from his comfortable chair, and began to walk up and down the room in his indignation. Other people nearer home had better taste than Reine. If she thought that he was to be whistled to, like a dog when he was wanted, she was mistaken. Not even when he was wanted;--it was clear enough that she did not want him, cold, uncourteous, unfriendly as she was! Everard’s mind rose like an angry sea, and swelled into such a ferment that he could not subdue himself. A mere acquaintance would have written more civilly, more kindly, would have thought it necessary at least to appear to join in the abrupt, cold, semi-invitation, which Reine transmitted as if she had nothing to do with it. Even her mother (a wise woman, with some real knowledge of the world, and who knew when a man was worth being civil to!) had perceived the coldness of the letter, and added a conciliatory postscript. Everard was wounded and humiliated in his moment of success and flattered vanity, when he was most accessible to such a wound. And he was quite incapable of divining--as probably he would have done in any one else’s case, but as no man seems capable of doing in his own--that Reine’s coldness was the best of all proof that she was not indifferent, and that something must