seating himself on a milestone, indulged in these meditations:--

"Kenelm, my friend, you are in a still worse scrape than I thought you
were an hour ago. You have evidently now got a woman on your hands.
What on earth are you to do with her? A runaway woman, who, meaning
to run off with somebody else--such are the crosses and contradictions
in human destiny--has run off with you instead. What mortal can hope
to be safe? The last thing I thought could befall me when I got up
this morning was that I should have any trouble about the other sex
before the day was over. If I were of an amatory temperament, the
Fates might have some justification for leading me into this snare,
but, as it is, those meddling old maids have none. Kenelm, my friend,
do you think you ever can be in love? and, if you were in love, do you
think you could be a greater fool than you are now?"

Kenelm had not decided this knotty question in the conference held
with himself, when a light and soft strain of music came upon his ear.
It was but from a stringed instrument, and might have sounded thin and
tinkling but for the stillness of the night, and that peculiar
addition of fulness which music acquires when it is borne along a
tranquil air. Presently a voice in song was heard from the distance
accompanying the instrument. It was a man's voice, a mellow and a
rich voice, but Kenelm's ear could not catch the words. Mechanically
he moved on towards the quarter from which the sounds came, for Kenelm
Chillingly had music in his soul, though he was not quite aware of it
himself. He saw before him a patch of greensward, on which grew a
solitary elm with a seat for wayfarers beneath it. From this sward
the ground receded in a wide semicircle bordered partly by shops,
partly by the tea-gardens of a pretty cottage-like tavern. Round the
tables scattered throughout the gardens were grouped quiet customers,