and Lily stamped her foot petulantly,
as in Kenelm's presence she had stamped it once before. "Speak plainly,
I insist."

"Miss Mordaunt, excuse me: I dare not," said Kenelm, rising with a sort
of bow one makes to the Queen; and he crossed over to Mrs. Braefield.

Lily remained, still pouting fiercely.

Sir Thomas took the chair Kenelm had vacated.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE hour for parting came. Of all the guests, Sir Thomas alone stayed
at the house a guest for the night. Mr. and Mrs. Emlyn had their own
carriage. Mrs. Braefield's carriage came to the door for Mrs. Cameron
and Lily.

Said Lily, impatiently and discourteously, "Who would not rather walk on
such a night?" and she whispered to her aunt.

Mrs. Cameron, listening to the whisper and obedient to every whim
of Lily's, said, "You are too considerate, dear Mrs. Braefield; Lily
prefers walking home; there is no chance of rain now."

Kenelm followed the steps of the aunt and niece, and soon overtook them
on the brook-side.

"A charming night, Mr. Chillingly," said Mrs. Cameron.

"An English summer night; nothing like it in such parts of the world as
I have visited. But, alas! of English summer nights there are but few."

"You have travelled much abroad?"

"Much, no, a little; chiefly on foot."

Lily hitherto had not said a word, and had been walking with downcast
head. Now she looked up and said, in the mildest and most conciliatory
of human voices,--

"You have been abroad;" then, with an acquiescence in the manners of
the world which to him she had never yet manifested, she added his
name, "Mr. Chillingly," and went on, more familiarly. "What a breadth
of meaning the word 'abroad' conveys! Away, afar from one's self, from
one's everyday life. How I envy you! you have been abroad: so has Lion"
(here drawing herself up), "I mean my guardian, Mr. Melville."

"Certainly, I have been abroad, but afar from myself--never. It is an
old saying,--all old sayings are true; most new sayings are false,--a
man carries his native soil at the sole of his foot."

Here the path somewhat narrowed. Mrs. Cameron went on first, Kenelm and
Lily behind; she, of course, on the dry path, he on the dewy grass.

She stopped him. "You are walking in the wet, and with those thin
shoes." Lily moved instinctively away from the dry path.

Homely though that speech of Lily's be, and absurd as said by a fragile
girl to a gladiator like Kenelm, it lit up a whole world of woman