ffect that Kenelm Chillingly produced on the mind and the heart of
Lily?

This was, after all, the question that puzzled him the most,--not
without reason: it might have puzzled the shrewdest bystander. The
artless candour with which she manifested her liking to him was at
variance with the ordinary character of maiden love; it seemed more the
fondness of a child for a favourite brother. And it was this uncertainty
that, in his own thoughts, justified Kenelm for lingering on, and
believing that it was necessary to win, or at least to learn more of,
her secret heart before he could venture to disclose his own. He did not
flatter himself with the pleasing fear that he might be endangering
her happiness; it was only his own that was risked. Then, in all those
meetings, all those conversations to themselves, there had passed none
of the words which commit our destiny to the will of another. If in the
man's eyes love would force its way, Lily's frank, innocent gaze chilled
it back again to its inward cell. Joyously as she would spring
forward to meet him, there was no tell-tale blush on her cheek, no
self-betraying tremor in her clear, sweet-toned voice. No; there had not
yet been a moment when he could say to himself, "She loves me." Often he
said to himself, "She knows not yet what love is."

In the intervals of time not passed in Lily's society, Kenelm would
take long rambles with Mr. Emlyn, or saunter into Mrs. Braefield's
drawing-room. For the former he conceived a more cordial sentiment of
friendship than he entertained for any man of his own age,--a friendship
that admitted the noble elements of admiration and respect.

Charles Emlyn was one of those characters in which the colours appear
pale unless the light be brought very close to them, and then each
tint seems to change into a warmer and richer one. The manner which, at
first, you would call merely gentle, becomes unaffectedly genial;
the mind you at first might term inert, though well-informed, you now
acknowledge to be full of disciplined vigour. Emlyn was not, however,
without his little amiable foibles; and it was, perhaps, these that made
him lovable. He was a great believer in human goodness, and very easily
imposed upon by cunning appeals to "his well-known benevolence." He
was disposed to overrate the excellence of all that he once took to his
heart. He thought he had the best wife in the world, the best children,
the best servants, the best beehive, th