d you. I speak as a true friend to you and to Lily
both. Earnestly I advise you, if Miss Mordaunt be the cause of your
lingering here, earnestly I advise you to leave while yet in time for
her peace of mind and your own."

"Her peace of mind," said Kenelm, in low faltering tones, scarcely
hearing the rest of Mrs. Braefield's speech. "Her peace of mind? Do
you sincerely think that she cares for me,--could care for me,--if I
stayed?"

"I wish I could answer you decidedly. I am not in the secrets of her
heart. I can but conjecture that it might be dangerous for the peace of
any young girl to see too much of a man like yourself, to divine that he
loved her, and not to be aware that he could not, with the approval of
his family, ask her to become his wife."

Kenelm bent his face down, and covered it with his right hand. He did
not speak for some moments. Then he rose, the fresh cheek very pale, and
said,--

"You are right. Miss Mordaunt's peace of mind must be the first
consideration. Excuse me if I quit you thus abruptly. You have given me
much to think of, and I can only think of it adequately when alone."

CHAPTER V.

FROM KENELM CHILLINGLY TO SIR PETER CHILLINGLY.

MY FATHER, MY DEAR FATHER,--This is no reply to your letters. I know
not if itself can be called a letter. I cannot yet decide whether it be
meant to reach your hands. Tired with talking to myself, I sit down to
talk to you. Often have I reproached myself for not seeing every fitting
occasion to let you distinctly know how warmly I love, how deeply I
reverence you; you, O friend, O father. But we Chillinglys are not a
demonstrative race. I don't remember that you, by words, ever expressed
to me the truth that you loved your son infinitely more than he
deserves. Yet, do I not know that you would send all your beloved old
books to the hammer rather than I should pine in vain for some untried,
if sinless, delight on which I had set my heart? And do you not
know equally well, that I would part with all my heritage, and turn
day-labourer, rather than you should miss the beloved old books?

That mutual knowledge is taken for granted in all that my heart yearns
to pour forth to your own. But, if I divine aright, a day is coming
when, as between you and me, there must be a sacrifice on the part of
one to the other. If so, I implore that the sacrifice may come from
you. How is this? How am I so ungenerous, so egotistical, so selfish, so
ungratefully u