yes from her, nor speaking, and she, with a soft word of farewell,
passed across the stile, and up the pathway through the dewy shades of
the copse, and out of the arch of the light, away from his eyes.

And away with her went the wild enchantment. He looked on barren air.
But it was no more the world of yesterday. The marvellous splendours had
sown seeds in him, ready to spring up and bloom at her gaze; and in his
bosom now the vivid conjuration of her tones, her face, her shape, makes
them leap and illumine him like fitful summer lightnings ghosts of the
vanished sun.

There was nothing to tell him that he had been making love and declaring
it with extraordinary rapidity; nor did he know it. Soft flushed cheeks!
sweet mouth! strange sweet brows! eyes of softest fire! how could his
ripe eyes behold you, and not plead to keep you? Nay, how could he let
you go? And he seriously asked himself that question.

To-morrow this place will have a memory--the river and the meadow, and
the white falling weir: his heart will build a temple here; and the
skylark will be its high-priest, and the old blackbird its glossy-gowned
chorister, and there will be a sacred repast of dewberries. To-day the
grass is grass: his heart is chased by phantoms and finds rest nowhere.
Only when the most tender freshness of his flower comes across him does
he taste a moment's calm; and no sooner does it come than it gives place
to keen pangs of fear that she may not be his for ever.

Erelong he learns that her name is Lucy. Erelong he meets Ralph, and
discovers that in a day he has distanced him by a sphere. He and Ralph
and the curate of Lobourne join in their walks, and raise classical
discussions on ladies' hair, fingering a thousand delicious locks, from
those of Cleopatra to the Borgia's. "Fair! fair! all of them fair!"
sighs the melancholy curate, "as are those women formed for our
perdition! I think we have in this country what will match the Italian
or the Greek." His mind flutters to Mrs. Doria, Richard blushes
before the vision of Lucy, and Ralph, whose heroine's hair is a dark
luxuriance, dissents, and claims a noble share in the slaughter of men
for dark-haired Wonders. They have no mutual confidences, but they are
singularly kind to each other, these three children of instinct.

CHAPTER XVI

Lady Blandish, and others who professed an interest in the fortunes and
future of the systematized youth, had occasionally mentioned names