I not rightly
understood you to say that though her guardian, Mr. Melville, is, as we
all know, a man who has risen above the rank of his parents, your niece,
Miss Mordaunt, is like yourself, by birth a gentlewoman?"

"Yes, by birth a gentlewoman," said Mrs. Cameron, raising her head with
a sudden pride. But she added, with as sudden a change to a sort of
freezing humility, "What does that matter? A girl without fortune,
without connection, brought up in this little cottage, the ward of a
professional artist, who was the son of a city clerk, to whom she owes
even the home she has found, is not in the same sphere of life as Mr.
Chillingly, and his parents could not approve of such an alliance for
him. It would be most cruel to her, if you were to change the innocent
pleasure she may take in the conversation of a clever and well-informed
stranger into the troubled interest which, since you remind me of her
age, a girl even so childlike and beautiful as Lily might conceive in
one represented to her as the possible partner of her life. Don't commit
that cruelty; don't--don't, I implore you!"

"Trust me," cried the warm-hearted Elsie, with tears rushing to her
eyes. "What you say so sensibly, so nobly, never struck me before. I
do not know much of the world,--knew nothing of it till I married,--and
being very fond of Lily, and having a strong regard for Mr. Chillingly,
I fancied I could not serve both better than--than--but I see now; he
is very young, very peculiar; his parents might object, not to Lily
herself, but to the circumstances you name. And you would not wish
her to enter any family where she was not as cordially welcomed as she
deserves to be. I am glad to have had this talk with you. Happily, I
have done no mischief as yet. I will do none. I had come to propose
an excursion to the remains of the Roman Villa, some miles off, and to
invite you and Mr. Chillingly. I will no longer try to bring him and
Lily together."

"Thank you. But you still misconstrue me. I do not think that Lily cares
half so much for Mr. Chillingly as she does for a new butterfly. I do
not fear their coming together, as you call it, in the light in which
she now regards him, and in which, from all I observe, he regards her.
My only fear is that a hint might lead her to regard him in another way,
and that way impossible."

Elsie left the house extremely bewildered, and with a profound contempt
for Mrs. Cameron's knowledge of what may happe