Kenelm was startled. This "an innocent!"--this a girl who had no mind to
be formed! In that presence he could not be cynical; could not speak of
Nature as a mechanism, a lying humbug, as he had done to the man poet.
He replied gravely:--
"The Creator has gifted the whole universe with language, but few are
the hearts that can interpret it. Happy those to whom it is no foreign
tongue, acquired imperfectly with care and pain, but rather a native
language, learned unconsciously from the lips of the great mother. To
them the butterfly's wing may well buoy into heaven a fairy's soul!"
When he had thus said, Lily turned, and for the first time attentively
looked into his dark soft eyes; then instinctively she laid her light
hand on his arm, and said in a low voice, "Talk on--talk thus; I like to
hear you."
But Kenelm did not talk on. They had now arrived at the garden-gate of
Mrs. Cameron's cottage, and the elder persons in advance paused at the
gate and walked with them to the house.
End of Volume VI.