Yet--I do not know how it came to pass, but so it was--even then Everard did not carry out his intention of making a start on his own account, and going off and leaving the little party which was just about to break up, each going his or her own way. He lingered and lingered still till the moment came when the ladies had arranged to leave. Herbert by this time had made up his mind to go on to Italy too, and Everard, in spite of himself, found that he was tacitly pledged to be his young cousin’s companion, though Bertie without Reine was not particularly to his mind. Though he had been partially weaned from his noisy young friends by Everard’s presence, Herbert had still made his boyish desire to emancipate himself sufficiently apparent to annoy and bore the elder man, who having long known the delights of freedom, was not so eager to claim them, nor so jealous of their infringement. Everard had no admiration for the billiard-rooms or smoking-rooms, or noisy, boyish parties which Herbert preferred so much to the society of his mother and sister. “Please yourself,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, as he left the lad at the door of these brilliant centres of society; and this shrug had more effect upon Herbert’s mind than dozens of moral lectures. His first doubt, indeed, as to whether the “life” which he was seeing, was not really of the most advanced and brilliant kind, was suggested to him by that contemptuous movement of his cousin’s shoulders. “He is a rustic, he is a Puritan,” Herbert said to himself, but quite unconsciously Everard’s shrug was as a cloud over his gayety. Everard, however, shrugged his shoulders much more emphatically when he found that he was expected to act the part of guide, philosopher, and friend to the young fellow, who was no longer an invalid, and who was so anxious to see the world. Once upon a time he had been very ready to undertake the office, to give the sick lad his arm, to wheel him about in his chair, to carry him up or down stairs when that was needful. “But you don’t expect me to be Herbert’s nurse all by myself,” he said ruefully, just after Madame de Mirfleur had made a pretty little speech to him about the benefit which his example and his society would be to her boy. Reine was in the room too, working demurely at her mother’s tapisserie, and making no sign. “He wants no nurse,” said Madame de Mirfleur, “thank God; but your society, cher Monsieur Everard, will be everything for him. It will set our minds at ease. Reine, speak for thyself, then. Do not let Monsieur Everard go away without thy word too.”