subtle beauties. This knowledge had been perhaps first instilled, and
subsequently nourished, by such poetry as she had not only learned by
heart, but taken up as inseparable from the healthful circulation of
her thoughts; not the poetry of our own day,--most young ladies know
enough of that,--but selected fragments from the verse of old, most of
them from poets now little read by the young of either sex, poets dear
to spirits like Coleridge or Charles Lamb,--none of them, however, so
dear to her as the solemn melodies of Milton. Much of such poetry she
had never read in books: it had been taught her in childhood by her
guardian the painter. And with all this imperfect, desultory culture,
there was such dainty refinement in her every look and gesture, and
such deep woman-tenderness of heart. Since Kenelm had commended "Numa
Pompilius" to her study, she had taken very lovingly to that
old-fashioned romance, and was fond of talking to him about Egeria as
of a creature who had really existed.

But what was the effect that he,--the first man of years correspondent
to her own with whom she had ever familiarly conversed,--what was the
effect that Kenelm Chillingly produced on the mind and the heart of
Lily?

This was, after all, the question that puzzled him the most,--not
without reason: it might have puzzled the shrewdest bystander. The
artless candour with which she manifested her liking to him was at
variance with the ordinary character of maiden love; it seemed more
the fondness of a child for a favourite brother. And it was this
uncertainty that, in his own thoughts, justified Kenelm for lingering
on, and believing that it was necessary to win, or at least to learn
more of, her secret heart before he could venture to disclose his own.
He did not flatter himself with the pleasing fear that he might be