ilia drew her slight scarf over the moth, so that it might not
fly off and become a prey to the bats. "Yet," said she, "the moth is
practical too."

"Ay, just now, since it has found an asylum from the danger that
threatened it in its course towards the stars."

Cecilia felt the beating of her heart, upon which lay the moth
concealed. Did she think that a deeper and more tender meaning than they
outwardly expressed was couched in these words? If so, she erred. They
now neared the garden gate, and Kenelm paused as he opened it. "See,"
he said, "the moon has just risen over those dark firs, making the still
night stiller. Is it not strange that we mortals, placed amid perpetual
agitation and tumult and strife, as if our natural element, conceive a
sense of holiness in the images antagonistic to our real life; I mean
in images of repose? I feel at the moment as if I suddenly were
made better, now that heaven and earth have suddenly become yet more
tranquil. I am now conscious of a purer and sweeter moral than either I
or you drew from the insect you have sheltered. I must come to the poets
to express it,--

"'The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow;
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.'

"Oh, that something afar! that something afar! never to be reached on
this earth,--never, never!"

There was such a wail in that cry from the man's heart that Cecilia
could not resist the impulse of a divine compassion. She laid her hand
on his, and looked on the dark wildness of his upward face with eyes
that Heaven meant to be wells of comfort to grieving man. At the light
touch of that hand Kenelm started, looked down, and met those soothing
eyes.

"I am happy to tell you that I have saved my Durham," cried out Mr.
Travers from the other side of the gate.

CHAPTER XX.

AS Kenelm that night retired to his own room, he paused on the
landing-place opposite to the portrait which Mr. Travers had consigned
to that desolate exile. This daughter of a race dishonoured in its
extinction might well have been the glory of the house she had entered
as a bride. The countenance was singularly beautiful, and of a character
of beauty eminently patrician; there was in its expression a gentleness
and modesty not often found in the female portraits of Sir Peter
Lely, and in the eyes and in the smile a wonderful aspect of innocent
happiness.

"What a speaking homily," soliloqui