eter of fame, the earth-born, still less can I dare to place upon paper all t

next day, the summer joyousness of that external Nature which does now and then, though, for the most part, deceitfu

f in the belief that had made the world so beautiful to him since the hour of their last parting. At all events it was due to her, due even to his rival, to assert his own claim to her choice. And the more he recalled all that Lily had ever said to him of her guardian

id that neither Mr. Melville nor Miss Mordaunt were at home; they had but just gone out together for a walk. He was about to turn back, when Mrs. Cameron came into the hall, and, rather by gesture than words, invited him to ente

een us will be soon over. But first tell me: you have seen your parents; you have asked their

with their full permission t

, rocking herself to and fro in the

of marriage. You, of course when you learned his name, must have known with whom his thought was connecte

have forestalled my intention, the intention which brings me; thus early to your house. I come to say to Miss Mordaunt's guardian, 'I ask the hand of your ward. If you also

teful to admit of one. If the choice were given to her between him and you, it is he whom she would choose. Solemnly I assure you of this. Do not, then, subject her to the pain of such a choice. Suppose, if you will, that you had attracted her fancy, and that now you proclaimed your love and urged

d it seems scarcely less honourable towards my worthy rival to endanger his own future happiness, should he discover later that his bride would have been happier with another. Why be so mysteriously apprehensive? If, as you say, with such apparent conviction, there is no doubt of your niece's preference for another, at a word from her own lips I depart, and you will see me no more. But that wor

they attracted the notice of the father's employer, a rich man of very benevolent heart and very cultivated taste. He sent the child, at his expense, to a first-rate commercial school, meaning to provide for him later in his own firm. The rich man was the head partner of an eminent bank; but very infirm health, and tastes much estranged from business, had induced him to retire from all active share in the firm, the management of which was confined to a so

the loss might have been easily retrieved in the first instance; unhappily he took the wrong course to retrieve it, and launched into new hazards. I must be brief. One day the world was startled by the news that a firm, famed for its supposed wealth and solidity, was bankrupt. Dishonesty was alleged, was proved, not against the father,-he wen

Kenelm covered his bended face with one hand, stretching out

Again before his ey

rs thrilled the tragic

ld held the young man

meron r

ild,-a girl. She did not survive the exhaustion of her confinement many days. The shock of her death snapped the feeble thread of the poor father's life. Both were borne to the grave on the same day. Before they died, both made the same prayer to their sole two mourners, the felon's sister, the old man's young benefactor. The prayer was this, that the new-born infant should be reared, however humbly, in ignorance of her birth, of a father's guilt and shame. She was not to pass a suppliant for charity to rich and high-born kinsfolk, who had vouchsafed no word even of pity to the felon's guiltless father and as guiltless wife. That promise has been kept till now. I am that daughter. The name I bear, and the name which I gave to my niece, are not ours, save as w

ide of honour are most royal attributes of woman or of man, no matter whether the fathers of the woman or the man were pirates as lawless as the fathers of Norman kings, or liars as unscrupulous, where their own interests were concerned, as have been the crowned representatives of lines as deservedly famous as Caesars and Bourbons, Tudors and Stuarts? Nobility, like genius, is inborn. One man alone guard /her/ secret!-guard a secret that if made known could trouble a hear

id rhetoric of some junior counsel, rhetoric in which the great lawyer had once indulged, or as a woman for whom romance is over dismisses as idle verbiage some romantic sentiment that befool

ersi

a son owes to parents, conceal that fact from them, could you, born to a station on which every gossip will ask, 'Who and what is the name of the future Lady Chillingly?' believe that the who and the what will never be discovered! Hav

e last parted, when I confided to you my love for your niece, when you consented to my proposal to return home and obtain my father

y. But my persuasion was that your father would not consent to your alliance with one so far beneath the expectations he was entitled to form, and the refusal of that consent would terminate all further acquaintance between you and Lily, leaving her secret undisclosed. It was not till you had left, only indeed two days ago, that I received a

EET, BL

e. My good friend and earliest patron, the German merchant at Luscombe, who called on me yesterday, offered to cover them with guineas thrice piled over the canvas. Imagine how happy I felt when I forced him to accept them as a present. What a leap in a man's life it is when he can afford to say, "I give!" Now then, at last, at last I am in a position which justifies the utterance of the hope which has for eighteen years been my solace, my support; been the sunbeam that ever shone through the gloom when my fate was at the darkest; been the melody that buoyed me aloft as in the song of the skylark, when in the voi

is not that of a felon's daughter transported to the hearth of nobles. To be happy, her lot mu

nd most responsible relative, do not contemn me for presumption, all else seems to me clear. Lily's childlike affection for me is too deep and too fond not to warm into a wife's love. Happily, too, she has not been reared in the stereotyped boarding-school shallowness of knowledge and vulgarities of gentility; but educated, like myself, by the free influences of Nature, longing for no halls and palaces save those that we build as we list, in fairyland; educated to comprehend and share the fancies which are more than booklore to the worshipper of art and song. In a day or two, perhaps the day after you receive this, I shall be able to escape from London, and most likely shall come on foot as usual. How I long to see once more the woodbine on the hedgerows, the green blades of the cornfields, the sunny lapse of the river, and dearer still the tiny falls of our own little noisy rill! Meanwhile I entreat you, dearest, gentlest, most honored of such few friends as my life has hitherto won to itself, to

dual slide from the relationship of friend into that of lover. I now understand what the great master of my art once said to me, "A career is a destiny." By one of those merchant princes who now at Manchester, as they did once at Genoa or Venice, reign alike over those two civilizers of the world which to dull eyes seem antagonistic, Art and Commerce, an offer is made to me for a picture on a subject which strikes his fancy: an offer so magnificently liberal that his commerce must command my art; and the nature of the subject compels me to seek the banks of the Rhine as soon as may be. I must have all the hues of the foliage in the meridian glories of summer. I can but stay at Grasmere a very few days; but before I leave I must know this,

piness, distinct from Art and fame, are summed up i

ffectio

.

d the letter w

scarcely known Lily five weeks. What is the feverish fancy of five weeks' growth

yes fixed upon the working features of Lily's aunt, "This man is more worthy of her than I. He prays you, in his letter, to

night I got

speak truthfully, I

, as to doubt what I should answer, if Lion asked me whether I would willingly say or do anything that made him unhappy? If there be such a doubt in my heart, I would tear it out by the roots, heart and all!' Oh, Mr. Chillingly! There would be no happiness for her with another, knowing that she had blighted the life of him to whom she owes so much, though she never will learn how much more she owes." Kenelm not replying to this remark, Mrs. Cameron resumed, "I will be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Chillingly. I was not quite satisfied with Lily's manner and looks the next morning, that is, yesterday. I did fear there might be some struggle

reached Kenelm's side as with a single bound, shook him heartily by the hand, saying, "I find that you have already been a welcomed

His own strong hand trembled like a leaf. He ventured but one glance at her face. All th

is emotion rendered less difficult by the single glance at that tranquil face. "I

but he did not see it; his eyes wandering away wi

ked up the hat a

smile half sweet, half bitter, "I have

me you are lodging with my old friend Jones. Come and stop a couple of days

all. No; I must be in Lo

door, bowed with the quiet grace that cha

find a betrothed," said the artist gayly: "but now he knows my de

ore he too had quitted the room and o

odge,-to pack up, I suppose,-let me

ing through the evergreen, that day on which the old woman, quitting her, said, "God bless you!" and on which the vicar, walking with Kenelm, spoke of her fairy charms; well, just in that spot Lily's face appeared again, not this time brightening through the evergr

evergreens. Kenelm took it reverentially.

by forever in this world. You understand

! God comfort me!" murmured Kenelm. Their eyes met. Oh,

m pas

lville was in the midst of some glowing sentence, begun when Ken

nd in his turn he halted, looked round on the sunlit landscape, and breathed deep, as if to drink into h

he brook-side, when I began to tell how solitary the world would be to me if I could not win her to my side; while I spoke she had turned aside from the path we had taken, and it was not till we were under the shadow of the

urial-ground, the old Gothic tomb,

all egotists, and the most garrulous of all gossips. You have wished me joy on my destined nuptials, when shal

t not seem to your ears a mockery when I wish you joy." So saying, so obeying in spite of himself the anguish of his heart, Kenelm wr

"he had acquired the right to learn," was not revealed to him as by an electric flash. "Poor fellow!" he said to himself pityingly; "how natural that he should fall in love with Fa

consolations of philosophy. Not for a moment did the happier rival suspect that Kenelm's love was returned; that an atom in the heart of the girl who had promised to be his bride could take its light or shadow from any love but his own. Yet, more from delicacy

r the banks of the Rhine, not to return till the autumn, when his marriage with Lily was to take place. During those days Lily was calm and seemingly cheerful; her man