ought a very
unprejudiced intellect, quite fitted to decide whether the public
opinion of a free and enlightened people was for turning St. Paul's
Cathedral into an Agapemone or not.

During the summer weeks he had thus vouchsafed to the turfs and groves
of Exmundham, Leopold Travers was not the only person whose good opinion
Chillingly Gordon had ingratiated. He had won the warmest approbation
from Mrs. Campion. His conversation reminded her of that which she had
enjoyed in the house of her departed spouse. In talking with Cecilia she
was fond of contrasting him to Kenelm, not to the favour of the
latter, whose humours she utterly failed to understand, and whom she
pertinaciously described as "so affected." "A most superior young man
Mr. Gordon, so well informed, so sensible,--above all, so natural." Such
was her judgment upon the unavowed candidate to Cecilia's hand; and
Mrs. Campion required no avowal to divine the candidature. Even Lady
Glenalvon had begun to take friendly interest in the fortunes of this
promising young man. Most women can sympathize with youthful ambition.
He impressed her with a deep conviction of his abilities, and still more
with respect for their concentration upon practical objects of power
and renown. She too, like Mrs. Campion, began to draw comparisons
unfavourable to Kenelm between the two cousins: the one seemed so
slothfully determined to hide his candle under a bushel, the other so
honestly disposed to set his light before men. She felt also annoyed and
angry that Kenelm was thus absenting himself from the paternal home at
the very time of her first visit to it, and when he had so felicitous
an opportunity of seeing more of the girl in whom he knew that Lady
Glenalvon deemed he might win, if he would properly woo, the wife that
would best suit him. So that when one day Mrs. Campion, walking through
the gardens alone with Lady Glenalvon while from the gardens into the
park went Chillingly Gordon, arm-in-arm with Leopold Travers, abruptly
asked, "Don't you think that Mr. Gordon is smitten with Cecilia, though
he, with his moderate fortune, does not dare to say so? And don't you
think that any girl, if she were as rich as Cecilia will be, would be
more proud of such a husband as Chillingly Gordon than of some silly
earl?"

Lady Glenalvon answered curtly, but somewhat sorrowfully, "Yes."

After a pause she added, "There is a man with whom I did once think she
would have been happier tha