XIV.

SOMEWHAT more than another year has rolled away. It is early spring
in London. The trees in the park and squares are budding into leaf and
blossom. Leopold Travers has had a brief but serious conversation with
his daughter, and now gone forth on horseback. Handsome and graceful
still, Leopold Travers when in London is pleased to find himself
scarcely less the fashion with the young than he was when himself in
youth. He is now riding along the banks of the Serpentine, no one better
mounted, better dressed, better looking, or talking with greater fluency
on the topics which interest his companions.

Cecilia is in the smaller drawing-room, which is exclusively
appropriated to her use, alone with Lady Glenalvon.

LADY GLENALVON.--"I own, my dear, dear Cecilia, that I arrange myself at
last on the side of your father. How earnestly at one time I had hoped
that Kenelm Chillingly might woo and win the bride that seemed to me
most fitted to adorn and to cheer his life, I need not say. But when at
Exmundham he asked me to befriend his choice of another, to reconcile
his mother to that choice,--evidently not a suitable one,--I gave him
up. And though that affair is at an end, he seems little likely ever to
settle down to practical duties and domestic habits, an idle wanderer
over the face of the earth, only heard of in remote places and with
strange companions. Perhaps he may never return to England."

CECILIA.--"He is in England now, and in London."

LADY GLENALVON.--"You amaze me! Who told you so?"

CECILIA.--"His father, who is with him. Sir Peter called yesterday, and
spoke to me so kindly." Cecilia here turned aside her face to conceal
the tears that had started to her eyes.

LADY GLENALVON.--"Did Mr. Travers see Sir Peter?"

CECILIA.--"Yes; and I think it was something that passed between them
which made my father speak to me--for the first time--almost sternly."

LADY GLENALVON.--"In urging Chillingly Gordon's suit?"

CECILIA.--"Commanding me to reconsider my rejection of it. He has
contrived to fascinate my father."

LADY GLENALVON.--"So he has me. Of course you might choose among other
candidates for your hand one of much higher worldly rank, of much larger
fortune; yet, as you have already rejected them, Gordon's merits become
still more entitled to a fair hearing. He has already leaped into
a position that mere rank and mere wealth cannot attain. Men of all
parties speak highly of his parliamentary a