themselves at the same crowded assemblies, and interchanged nods and
salutations. But their habits were different; the houses at which
they were intimate were not the same, neither did they frequent the
same clubs. Kenelm's chief bodily exercise was still that of long and
early rambles into rural suburbs; Leopold's was that of a late ride in
the Row. Of the two, Leopold was much more the man of pleasure. Once
restored to metropolitan life, a temper constitutionally eager,
ardent, and convivial took kindly, as in earlier youth, to its light
range of enjoyments.

Had the intercourse between the two men been as frankly familiar as it
had been at Neesdale Park, Kenelm would probably have seen much more
of Cecilia at her own home; and the admiration and esteem with which
she already inspired him might have ripened into much warmer feeling,
had he thus been brought into clearer comprehension of the soft and
womanly heart, and its tender predisposition towards himself.

He had said somewhat vaguely in his letter to Sir Peter, that
"sometimes he felt as if his indifference to love, as to ambition, was
because he had some impossible ideal in each." Taking that conjecture
to task, he could not honestly persuade himself that he had formed any
ideal of woman and wife with which the reality of Cecilia Travers was
at war. On the contrary, the more he thought over the characteristics
of Cecilia, the more they seemed to correspond to any ideal that had
floated before him in the twilight of dreamy revery; and yet he knew
that he was not in love with her, that his heart did not respond to
his reason; and mournfully he resigned himself to the conviction that
nowhere in this planet, from the normal pursuits of whose inhabitants
he felt so estranged, was there waiting for him the smiling playmate,
the earnest helpmate. As this conviction strengthened, so an