Other toasts were given—other speeches made. Due honour was paid to Lady Hexham, by personal friends and acquaintances of the family, many of whom had come far to greet her. She was visibly affected, and though actuated naturally by conflicting feelings, declared to Mrs. Banneret that she never expected to feel so happy again. As for Hermione and Vanda, they kept assuring their mother that they quite realised all ‘the claims of long descent,’ and couldn’t think of letting Corisande go back to Bruges. Mrs. Banneret was quite willing to adopt her; Eric and Reggie followed suit; and so, with more happy nonsense, ‘God save the King’ was struck up by the much-enduring band, and the great assemblage commenced to disperse, homewardly intent.
But the summer day in the Northern Isles is long—the twilight extends far into the night. There was a moon also; and the soft, warm mellow eve lingered, hour after hour, till the last departing revellers were safely lighted on their path. There was universal consensus of opinion—genuinely, if variously, in some cases incongruously, expressed—that it was many a year since there had been the like of it at Hexham Hall; it was almost too good to be true that there would be another such meeting next year. ‘Well, God bless Squire Banneret, anyhow!’ was the benediction which mostly concluded the argument and assertions. The summer day was spent, indeed the lingering twilight had long invaded the scene, when the rearguard of the great host of guests and revellers moved homeward, echoing in various forms of speech the common sentiment of grateful appreciation. The drags and carriages, phaetons and dog-carts, had rolled, and rattled, and rumbled along the high roads and lanes hours before, but still the rural visitors, chiefly on foot, thronged the pathways. Amid the confused murmur of voices the dominant note of assent was the declaration that the county had never seen such a treat before, so thoroughly carried out in every detail, and that if, as was promised, such an entertainment would be annual, the tenants and humbler neighbours would have indeed cause to bless the day when the Bannerets came among them.
As for the families, as represented by Lady Hexham, the Honourable Corisande and her brothers, together with Mr. and Mrs. Banneret, with their sons and daughters, there could not have been found a more harmonious _rapprochement_ of the old order and the new. The girls were frankly, genuinely fond of one another by this time, a feeling which threatened to extend beyond the division of sex,—the Honourable Falkland, who had recently been in command of a torpedo-destroyer, paying rather marked attention to Hermione, and Miss Corisande inclining to argumentative discussions with Reggie upon the relative advantages, or otherwise, of old and new countries. Nothing had advanced beyond the ordinary limits of friendliness; yet there were signs and tokens, recognised by keen observers, that such positions were, under favourable circumstances, capable of being permanently strengthened.