elm-trees was
beautifully sprinkled with stars, and a low stable building had a full
drop of quivering silver just issuing from the mouth of the chimney. It
was a moonless night, but the light of the stars was sufficient to show
the outline of the young woman's form, and the shape of her face gazing
gravely, indeed almost sternly, into the sky. She had come out into
the winter's night, which was mild enough, not so much to look with
scientific eyes upon the stars, as to shake herself free from certain
purely terrestrial discontents. Much as a literary person in like
circumstances would begin, absent-mindedly, pulling out volume after
volume, so she stepped into the garden in order to have the stars at
hand, even though she did not look at them. Not to be happy, when she
was supposed to be happier than she would ever be again--that, as far as
she could see, was the origin of a discontent which had begun almost as
soon as she arrived, two days before, and seemed now so intolerable
that she had left the family party, and come out here to consider it by
herself. It was not she who thought herself unhappy, but her cousins,
who thought it for her. The house was full of cousins, much of her age,
or even younger, and among them they had some terribly bright eyes. They
seemed always on the search for something between her and Rodney, which
they expected to find, and yet did not find; and when they searched,
Katharine became aware of wanting what she had not been conscious of
wanting in London, alone with William and her parents. Or, if she
did not want it, she missed it. And this state of mind depressed her,
because she had been accustomed always to give complete satisfaction,
and her self-love was now a little ruffled. She would have liked to
break through the reserve habitual to her in order to justify her
engagement to some one whose opinion she valued. No one had spoken a
word of criticism, but they left her alone with William; not that that
would have mattered, if they had not left her alone so politely; and,
perhaps, that would not have mattered if they had not seemed so queerly
silent, almost respectful, in her presence, which gave way to criticism,
she felt, out of it.

Looking now and then at the sky, she went through the list of her
cousins' names: Eleanor, Humphrey, Marmaduke, Silvia, Henry, Cassandra,
Gilbert, and Mostyn--Henry, the cousin who taught the young ladies
of Bungay to play upon the violin, was the only on