When the ladies were gone Everard laughed, all alone by himself, he could not help it; and the echoes took up the laughter, and rang into that special corner of the gallery which he knew so well, centring there. Why there, of all places in the world? Was it some ghost of little Reine in her childhood that laughed? Reine in her childhood had been the one who exercised choice. It was she who might have thrown the handkerchief, not Everard. And then a hush came over him, and a compunction, as he thought where Reine was at this moment, and how she might be occupied. Bending over her brother’s death-bed, hearing his last words, her heart contracted with the bitter pang of parting, while her old playfellow laughed, and wondered whether he should choose her out of the three to share his grandeur. Everard grew quite silent all at once, and poured himself out a glass of the old claret in deep humiliation and stillness, feeling ashamed of himself. He held the wine up to the light with the solemnest countenance, trying to take himself in, and persuade himself that he had no lighter thoughts in his mind, and then having swallowed it with equal solemnity, he got up and strolled out into the garden. He had so grave a face when Miss Susan met him, that she thought for the first moment that some letter had come and that all was over, and gasped and called to him, what was it? what was it? “Nothing!” said Everard more solemnly than ever. He was impervious to any attempt at laughter for the rest of the evening, ashamed of himself and his light thoughts, in sudden contrast with the thoughts that must be occupying his cousins, his old playmates. And yet, as he went home in the moonlight, the shock of that contrast lessened, and his young lightness of mind began to reassert itself. Before he got out of hearing of the manor he began to whistle again unawares; but this time it was not one of Reine’s songs. It was a light opera air which, no doubt, one of the other girls had taught him, or so, at least, Miss Susan thought. CHAPTER V.