endangering her happiness; it was only his own that was risked. Then,
in all those meetings, all those conversations to themselves, there
had passed none of the words which commit our destiny to the will of
another. If in the man's eyes love would force its way, Lily's frank,
innocent gaze chilled it back again to its inward cell. Joyously as
she would spring forward to meet him, there was no tell-tale blush on
her cheek, no self-betraying tremor in her clear, sweet-toned voice.
No; there had not yet been a moment when he could say to himself, "She
loves me." Often he said to himself, "She knows not yet what love
is."

In the intervals of time not passed in Lily's society, Kenelm would
take long rambles with Mr. Emlyn, or saunter into Mrs. Braefield's
drawing-room. For the former he conceived a more cordial sentiment of
friendship than he entertained for any man of his own age,--a
friendship that admitted the noble elements of admiration and respect.

Charles Emlyn was one of those characters in which the colours appear
pale unless the light be brought very close to them, and then each
tint seems to change into a warmer and richer one. The manner which,
at first, you would call merely gentle, becomes unaffectedly genial;
the mind you at first might term inert, though well-informed, you now
acknowledge to be full of disciplined vigour. Emlyn was not, however,
without his little amiable foibles; and it was, perhaps, these that
made him lovable. He was a great believer in human goodness, and very
easily imposed upon by cunning appeals to "his well-known
benevolence." He was disposed to overrate the excellence of all that
he once took to his heart. He thought he had the best wife in the
world, the best children, the best servants, the best beehive, the
best pony, and the best house-dog. His parish was the most virtuous,