The evening came to an end at last. The great people went first, as became them, filling the rural roads with the ponderous rumble of their great carriages and gleam of their lamps. The whole neighborhood was astir. A little crowd of village people had collected round the gates to see the ladies in their fine dresses, and to catch the distant echo of the festivities. There was quite an excitement among them, as carriage after carriage rolled away. The night was soft and warm and light, the moon invisible, but yet shedding from behind the clouds a subdued lightness into the atmosphere. As the company dwindled, and ceremony diminished, a group gradually collected in the great porch, and at last this group dwindled to the family party and the Farrel-Austins, who were the last to go away. This was by no means the desire of their father, who had derived little pleasure from the entertainment. None of those ulterior views which Kate and Sophy had discussed so freely between themselves had been communicated to their father, and he saw nothing but the celebration of his own downfall, and the funeral of his hopes, in this feast, which was all to the honor of Herbert. Consequently, he had been eager to get away at the earliest moment possible, and would even have preceded Lord Kingsborough, could he have moved his daughters, who did not share his feelings. On the contrary, the display which they had just witnessed had produced a very sensible effect upon Kate and Sophy. They were very well off, but they did not possess half the riches of Whiteladies; and the grandeur of the stately old hall, and the importance of the party, impressed these young women of the world. Sophy, who was the younger, was naturally the less affected; but Kate, now five-and-twenty, and beginning to perceive very distinctly that all is vanity, was more moved than I can say. In the intervals of livelier intercourse, and especially during that moment in the drawing-room when the gentlemen were absent--a moment pleasing in its calm to the milder portion of womankind, but which fast young ladies seldom endure with patience--Kate made pointed appeals to her sister’s proper feelings. “If you let all this slip through your fingers, I shall despise you,” she said with vehemence. “Go in for it yourself, then,” whispered the bold Sophy; “I shan’t object.”