them."

"Whatever they were I am pleased to see they did not prevent your
return," said Mrs. Braefield, graciously. "But where have you found a
lodging; why not have come to us? My husband would have been scarcely
less glad than myself to receive you."

"You say that so sincerely, and so cordially, that to answer by a brief
'I thank you' seems rigid and heartless. But there are times in life
when one yearns to be alone,--to commune with one's own heart, and, if
possible, be still; I am in one of those moody times. Bear with me."

Mrs. Braefield looked at him with affectionate, kindly interest. She
had gone before him through the solitary road of young romance. She
remembered her dreamy, dangerous girlhood, when she, too, had yearned to
be alone.

"Bear with you; yes, indeed. I wish, Mr. Chillingly, that I were your
sister, and that you would confide in me. Something troubles you."

"Troubles me,--no. My thoughts are happy ones, and they may sometimes
perplex me, but they do not trouble."

Kenelm said this very softly; and in the warmer light of his musing
eyes, the sweeter play of his tranquil smile, there was an expression
which did not belie his words.

"You have not told me where you have found a lodging," said Mrs.
Braefield, somewhat abruptly.

"Did I not?" replied Kenelm, with an unconscious start, as from an
abstracted reverie. "With no undistinguished host, I presume, for when
I asked him this morning for the right address of this cottage, in order
to direct such luggage as I have to be sent there, he gave me his card
with a grand air, saying, 'I am pretty well known at Moleswich, by
and beyond it.' I have not yet looked at his card. Oh, here it
is,--'Algernon Sidney Gale Jones, Cromwell Lodge;' you laugh. What do
you know of him?"

"I wish my husband were here; he would tell you more about him. Mr.
Jones is quite a character."

"So I perceive."

"A great radical,--very talkative and troublesome at the vestry; but our
vicar, Mr. Emlyn, says there is no real harm in him, that his bark is
worse than his bite, and that his republican or radical notions must be
laid to the door of his godfathers! In addition to his name of Jones, he
was unhappily christened Gale; Gale Jones being a noted radical orator
at the time of his birth. And I suppose Algernon Sidney was prefixed
to Gale in order to devote the new-born more emphatically to republican
principles."

"Naturally, therefore, Algernon Sidney Gale J