for my personal satisfaction."

Mr. Emlyn laughed good-humouredly, and, as they had now reached the
bridge, shook hands with Kenelm, and walked homewards, along the
brook-side and through the burial-ground, with the alert step and the
uplifted head of a man who has joy in life and admits of no fear in
death.



CHAPTER XIV.

FOR the next two weeks or so Kenelm and Lily met not indeed so often
as the reader might suppose, but still frequently; five times at Mrs.
Braefield's, once again at the vicarage, and twice when Kenelm had
called at Grasmere; and, being invited to stay to tea at one of those
visits, he stayed the whole evening. Kenelm was more and more
fascinated in proportion as he saw more and more of a creature so
exquisitely strange to his experience. She was to him not only a
poem, but a poem in the Sibylline Books; enigmatical, perplexing
conjecture, and somehow or other mysteriously blending its interest
with visions of the future.

Lily was indeed an enchanting combination of opposites rarely blended
into harmony. Her ignorance of much that girls know before they
number half her years was so relieved by candid, innocent simplicity,
so adorned by pretty fancies and sweet beliefs, and so contrasted and
lit up by gleams of a knowledge that the young ladies we call well
educated seldom exhibit,--knowledge derived from quick observation of
external Nature, and impressionable susceptibility to its varying and