e."

There was a rustle as of a woman's dress in sudden change of movement
behind the tea-urn.

"Cissy," said Mrs. Campion, "are we ever to have our tea?"

"I beg pardon," answered a voice behind the urn. "I hear Pompey" (the
Skye terrier) "whining on the lawn. They have shut him out. I will be
back presently."

Cecilia rose and was gone. Mrs. Campion took her place at the tea-urn.

"It is quite absurd of Cissy to be so fond of that hideous dog," said
Travers, petulantly.

"Its hideousness is its beauty," returned Mrs. Campion, laughing. "Mr.
Belvoir selected it for her as having the longest back and the shortest
legs of any dog he could find in Scotland."

"Ah, George gave it to her; I forgot that," said Travers, laughing
pleasantly.

It was some minutes before Miss Travers returned with the Skye
terrier, and she seemed to have recovered her spirits in regaining that
ornamental accession to the party; talking very quickly and gayly, and
with flushed cheeks, like a young person excited by her own overflow of
mirth.

But when, half an hour afterwards, Kenelm took leave of her and Mrs.
Campion at the hall-door, the flush was gone, her lips were tightly
compressed, and her parting words were not audible. Then, as his figure
(side by side with her father, who accompanied his guest to the lodge)
swiftly passed across the lawn and vanished amid the trees beyond, Mrs.
Campion wound a mother-like arm around her waist and kissed her.
Cecilia shivered and turned her face to her friend smiling; but such a
smile,--one of those smiles that seem brimful of tears.

"Thank you, dear," she said meekly; and, gliding away towards the
flower-garden, lingered a while by the gate which Kenelm had opened
the night before. Then she went with languid steps up the green slopes
towards the ruined priory.

BOOK IV.

CHAPTER I.

IT is somewhat more than a year and a half since Kenelm Chillingly left
England, and the scene now is in London, during that earlier and more
sociable season which precedes the Easter holidays,--season in which
the charm of intellectual companionship is not yet withered away in the
heated atmosphere of crowded rooms,--season in which parties are small,
and conversation extends beyond the interchange of commonplace with
one's next neighbour at a dinner-table,--season in which you have a
fair chance of finding your warmest friends not absorbed by the superior
claims of their chilliest acquaintances