Lights were gleaming in the windows and round the balcony, and the house was pleasant with the buzz of conversation, and soft laughter, and sweet music. The party seemed altogether a very delightful one; for a smile was on every lip, and distilled honey dropped from every tongue, while the presiding genius of the establishment was benign and affable, and moved among his guests like Jove dispensing agreeability.
The brothers Nuttall had met in the ball-room. The only words they exchanged were "Matthew!" "Nicholas!" and then, after a long pressure of the hand, they adjourned to the balcony, where their conversation would be more private than in the house.
They felt somewhat awkward; the days they had passed together might have belonged to another life, so long gone by did that time seem. The bridge between their boyhood and their old age had crumbled down, and the fragments had been almost quite washed by the stream of Time. Still, some memory of the old affection was stirred into life by the meeting, and they both felt softened and saddened as their hands lay in each other's clasp.
They paced the balcony in silence at first. Then the elder, Matthew, asked some stray questions as to the old places he used to frequent, and smiled and pondered wonderingly as he heard of the changes that had taken place.
"And the yew, where the parrot used to swing, gone!" he said. "And the wood where we went nutting?"
"Almost a city, Mat. A tree here and there, that's all. I was thinking only to-night of that wood, and of one happy day we spent there--you know with whom?"
"I know--I know. Good God! I have not thought of it or them for twenty years. And now they come to me again. Do they live?"
"Drowned!"
"Poor girls! There, Nick, let us talk of something else. It is no wonder things have changed. We have changed more than they."
"Yes, we are old men now," responded his brother. "This is a strange meeting, Mat, and in a new world, too."