CHAPTER IV.

TOM went away the next morning. He declined to see Jessie again,
saying curtly, "I don't wish the impression made on me the other
evening to incur a chance of being weakened."

Kenelm was in no mood to regret his friend's departure. Despite all
the improvement in Tom's manners and culture, which raised him so much
nearer to equality with the polite and instructed heir of the
Chillinglys, Kenelm would have felt more in sympathy and rapport with
the old disconsolate fellow-wanderer who had reclined with him on the
grass, listening to the minstrel's talk or verse, than he did with the
practical, rising citizen of Luscombe. To the young lover of Lily
Mordaunt there was a discord, a jar, in the knowledge that the human
heart admits of such well-reasoned, well-justified transfers of
allegiance; a Jessie to-day, or an Emily to-morrow; "La reine est
morte: vive la reine"

An hour or two after Tom had gone, Kenelm found himself almost
mechanically led towards Braefieldville. He had instinctively divined
Elsie's secret wish with regard to himself and Lily, however skilfully
she thought she had concealed it.

At Braefieldville he should hear talk of Lily, and in the scenes where
Lily had been first beheld.

He found Mrs. Braefield alone in the drawing-room, seated by a table
covered with flowers, which she was assorting and intermixing for the