"I am so sorry I cannot. I am obliged to return home at once for a few
days. That old family of Fletwode! I think I see before me, while we
speak, the gray tower in which they once held sway; and the last of the
race following Mammon along the Progress of the Age,--a convicted felon!
What a terrible satire on the pride of birth!"

Kenelm left Cromwell Lodge that evening, but he still kept on his
apartments there, saying he might be back unexpectedly any day in the
course of the next week.

He remained two days in London, wishing all that he had communicated to
Sir Peter in writing to sink into his father's heart before a personal
appeal to it.

The more he revolved the ungracious manner in which Mrs. Cameron had
received his confidence, the less importance he attached to it. An
exaggerated sense of disparities of fortune in a person who appeared
to him to have the pride so common to those who have known better days,
coupled with a nervous apprehension lest his family should ascribe to
her any attempt to ensnare a very young man of considerable worldly
pretensions into a marriage with a penniless niece, seemed to account
for much that had at first perplexed and angered him. And if, as he
conjectured, Mrs. Cameron had once held a much higher position in the
world than she did now,--a conjecture warranted by a certain peculiar
conventional undeniable elegance which characterized her habitual
manner,--and was now, as she implied, actually a dependant on the bounty
of a painter who had only just acquired some professional distinction,
she might well shrink from the mortification of becoming an object of
compassion to her richer neighbours; nor, when he came to think of it,
had he any more right than those neighbours to any confidence as to
her own or Lily's parentage, so long as he was not formally entitled to
claim admission into her privity.

London seemed to him intolerably dull and wearisome. He called nowhere
except at Lady Glenalvon's; he was glad to hear from the servants that
she was still at Exmundham. He relied much on the influence of the queen
of the fashion with his mother, whom he knew would be more difficult to
persuade than Sir Peter, nor did he doubt that he should win to his side
that sympathizing and warm-hearted queen.

CHAPTER VII.

IT is somewhere about three weeks since the party invited by Sir Peter
and Lady Chillingly assembled at Exmundham, and they are still there,
though people invite