ous, Kenelm was roused
slowly, reluctantly. Something struck softly on his cheek--again a
little less softly; he opened his eyes--they fell first upon two tiny
rosebuds, which, on striking his face, had fallen on his breast; and
then looking up, he saw before him, in an opening of the trellised
circle, a female child's laughing face. Her hand was still uplifted,
charged with another rosebud; but behind the child's figure, looking
over her shoulder and holding back the menacing arm, was a face as
innocent but lovelier far--the face of a girl in her first youth, framed
round with the blossoms that festooned the trellis. How the face became
the flowers! It seemed the fairy spirit of them.

Kenelm started and rose to his feet. The child, the one whom he had so
ungallantly escaped from, ran towards him through a wicket in the
circle. Her companion disappeared.

"Is it you?" said Kenelm to the child--"you who pelted me so cruelly?
Ungrateful creature! Did I not give you the best strawberries in the
dish, and all my own cream?"

"But why did you run away and hide yourself when you ought to be dancing
with me?" replied the young lady, evading, with the instinct of her sex,
all answer to the reproach she had deserved.

"I did not run away; and it is clear that I did not mean to hide myself,
since you so easily found me out. But who was the young lady with you? I
suspect she pelted me too, for _she_ seems to have run away to
hide herself."

"No, she did not pelt you; she wanted to stop me, and you would have had
another rosebud--oh, so much bigger!--if she had not held back my arm.
Don't you know her--don't you know Lily?"

"No; so that is Lily? You shall introduce me to her."

By this time they had passed out of the circle through the little wicket
opposite the path by which Kenelm had entered, and opening at once on
the lawn. Here at some distance the children were grouped; some reclined
on the grass, some walking to and fro, in the interval of the dance....

Before he had reached the place, Mrs. Braefield met him.

"Lily is come!"

"I know it--I have seen her."

"Is not she beautiful?"

"I must see more of her if I am to answer critically; but before you
introduce me, may I be permitted to ask who and what is Lily?"

Mrs. Braefield paused a moment before she answered, and yet the answer
was brief enough not to need much consideration She is a Miss Mordaunt,
an orphan; and as I before told you, resides with her