“Since you have come back, let us settle about when they are to come,” said Kate; and then there ensued a lively discussion. They clustered all together at the end of the lane, in the clear space where there were no shadowing trees--the two young men acting as shadows, the girls all distinct in their pretty light dresses, which the moon whitened and brightened. The consultation was very animated, and diversified by much mirth and laughter, Sophy being wild, as she said, with excitement, with the stimulation of the race, and of the night air and the freedom. “After a grand party of swells, where one has to behave one’s self,” she said, “one always goes wild.” And she fell to waltzing about the party. Everard was the only one of them who had any doubt as to the reality of Sophy’s madcap mood; the others accepted it with the naive confidence of innocence. They said to each other, what a merry girl she was! when at last, moved by Mr. Farrel-Austin’s sulks and the determination of the coachman, the girls permitted themselves to be placed in the carriage. “Recollect Friday!” they both cried, kissing Reine, and giving the most cordial pressure of the hand to Herbert. The three who were left stood and looked after the carriage as it set off along the moonlit road. Reine had taken her brother’s arm. She gave Everard no opportunity to resume that interrupted conversation on board the steamboat. And Kate and Sophy had not been at all attentive to their cousin, who was quite as nearly related to them as Bertie, so that if he was slightly misanthropical and inclined to find fault, it can scarcely be said that he had no justification. They all strolled along together slowly, enjoying the soft evening and the suppressed moonlight, which was now dim again, struggling faintly through a mysterious labyrinth of cloud. “I had forgotten what nice girls they were,” said Herbert; “Sophy especially; so kind and so genial and unaffected. How foolish one is when one is young! I don’t think I liked them, even, when we were last here.” “They are sometimes too kind,” said Everard, shrugging his shoulders; but neither of the others took any notice of what he said. “One is so much occupied with one’s self when one is young,” said middle-aged Reine, already over twenty, and feeling all the advantages which age bestows. “Do you think it is that?” said Herbert. He was much affected by the cordiality of his cousins, and moved by many concurring causes to a certain sentimentality of mind; and he was not indisposed for a little of that semi-philosophical talk which sounds so elevating and so improving at his age. “Yes,” said Reine, with confidence; “one is so little sure of one’s self, one is always afraid of having done amiss; things you say sound so silly when you think them over. I blush sometimes now when I am quite alone to think how silly I must have seemed; and that prevents you doing justice to others; but I like Kate best.”