‘How much you have seen, Edmund!’

‘I have been a spectator, you an actor,’ he said, smiling.

Her quiescence did not long continue, for the poor people had begun to assemble on the gravel road before the front door to see the fireworks, and she hurried away to renew her acquaintance with her village friends, guessing at them in the dark, asking after old mothers and daughters at service, inquiring the names of new babies, and whether the old ones were at school, and excusing herself for having become ‘quite a stranger.’

In the midst—­whish—­hiss, with steady swiftness, up shot in the dark purple air the first rocket, bursting and scattering a rain of stars.  There was an audible gasp in the surrounding homely world, a few little cries, and a big boy clutched tight hold of her arm, saying, ‘I be afeard.’  She was explaining away his alarms, when she heard her brother’s voice, and found her arm drawn into his.

‘Here you are, then,’ he said; ‘I thought I heard your voice.’

’Oh!  Maurice, I have hardly seen you.  Let us have a nice quiet turn in the park together.’

He resisted, saying, ’I don’t approve of parents and guardians losing themselves.  What have you done with all your children?’

‘What have you done with yours?’ retorted she.

’I left Willie and Mary at the window with their governess, I came to see that these other children of mine were orderly.’

‘Most proper, prudential, and exemplary Maurice!’ his sister laughed.  ’Now I have an equally hearty belief in my children being somewhere, sure to turn up when wanted.  Come, I want to get out from the trees to look for Colonel Bury’s harvest moon, for I believe she is an imposition.’

’No, I’m not coming.  You, don’t understand your duties.  Your young ladies ought always to know where to find you, and you where to find them.’

’Oh!  Maurice, what must you have suffered before you imported Winifred to chaperon me!’

’You are in so mad a mood that I shall attempt only one moral maxim, and that is, that no one should set up for a chaperon, till she has retired from business on her own account.’

’That’s a stroke at my dancing with poor Fred, but it was his only chance of speaking to me.’

‘Not particularly at the dancing.’

‘Well, then—­’

’You’ll see, by-and-bye.  It was not your fault if those girls were not in all sorts of predicaments.’

’I believe you think life is made up of predicaments.  And I want to hear whether William has written to you anything about poor Fred.’

’Only that he is more mad than ever, and that he let him go, thinking that there is no chance of Belraven helping him, but that it may wear itself out on the journey.’

A revolving circle shedding festoons of purple and crimson jets of fire made all their talk interjectional, and they had by this time reached the terrace, where all the company were assembled, the open windows at regular intervals casting bewildering lights on the heads and shoulders in front of them.  Then out burst a grand wheat-sheaf of yellow flame with crimson ears and beards, by whose light Albinia recognised Gilbert standing close to her in the shadow, and asked him where the rest where.’