THE hour for parting came. Of all the guests, Sir Thomas alone stayed
at the house a guest for the night. Mr. and Mrs. Emlyn had their own
carriage. Mrs. Braefield's carriage came to the door for Mrs. Cameron
and Lily.
Said Lily, impatiently and discourteously, "Who would not rather walk
on such a night?" and she whispered to her aunt.
Mrs. Cameron, listening to the whisper and obedient to every whim of
Lily's, said, "You are too considerate, dear Mrs. Braefield; Lily
prefers walking home; there is no chance of rain now."
Kenelm followed the steps of the aunt and niece, and soon overtook
them on the brook-side.
"A charming night, Mr. Chillingly," said Mrs. Cameron.
"An English summer night; nothing like it in such parts of the world
as I have visited. But, alas! of English summer nights there are but
few."
"You have travelled much abroad?"
"Much, no, a little; chiefly on foot."
Lily hitherto had not said a word, and had been walking with downcast
head. Now she looked up and said, in the mildest and most
conciliatory of human voices,--
"You have been abroad;" then, with an acquiescence in the manners of
the world which to him she had never yet manifested, she added his
name, "Mr. Chillingly," and went on, more familiarly. "What a breadth
of meaning the word 'abroad' conveys! Away, afar from one's self,
from one's everyday life. How I envy you! you have been abroad: so
has Lion" (here drawing herself up), "I mean my guardian, Mr.
Melville."
"Certainly, I have been abroad, but afar from myself--never. It is an
old saying,--all old sayings are true; most new sayings are false,--a
man carries his native soil at the sole of his foot."
Here the path somewhat narrowed. Mrs. Cameron went on first, Kenelm
and Lily behind; she, of course, on the dry path, he on the dewy
grass.
She stopped him. "You are walking in the wet, and with those thin
shoes." Lily moved instinctively away from the dry path.
Homely though that speech of Lily's be, and absurd as said by a
fragile girl to a gladiator like Kenelm, it lit up a whole world of
womanhood: it showed all that undiscoverable land which was hidden to
the learned Mr. Emlyn, all that land which an uncomprehended girl
seizes and reigns over when she becomes wife and mother.
At that homely speech, and that impulsive movement, Kenelm halted, in
a sort of dreaming maze. He turned timidly, "Can you forgive me for
my rude words? I presumed to find fault with you."
"And so justly. I have been thinking over all you said, and I feel
you were so right; only I still do not quite understand what you meant
by the quality for mortals which the fairy did not give to her
changeling."
"If I did not dare say it before, I should still less dare to say it
now."
"Do." There was no longer the stamp of the foot, no longer the flash
from her eyes, no longer the wilfulness which said, "I insist;"--"
Do;" soothingly, sweetly, imploringly.
Thus pushed to it, Kenelm plucked up courage, and not trusting himself
to look at Lily, answered brusquely,--
"The quality desirable for men, but more essential to women in
proportion as they are fairy-like, though the tritest thing possible,
is good temper."
Lily made a sudden bound from his side, and joined her aunt, walking
through the wet grass.
When they reached the garden-gate, Kenelm advanced and opened it.
Lily passed him by haughtily; they gained the cottage-door.
"I don't ask you in at this hour," said Mrs. Cameron. "It would be
but a false compliment."
Kenelm bowed and retreated. Lily left her aunt's side, and came
towards him, extending her hand.
"I shall consider your words, Mr. Chillingly," she said, with a
strangely majestic air. "At present I think you are not right. I am
not ill-tempered; but--" here she paused, and then added with a
loftiness of mien which, had she not been so exquisitely pretty, would
have been rudeness--"in any case I forgive you."