to it in a very few days and rectifying your mistake as to the point
of view in which I regard your niece. In a word," here the expression
of his countenance and the tone of his voice underwent a sudden
change, "it is the dearest wish of my heart to be empowered by my
parents to assure you of the warmth with which they will welcome your
niece as their daughter, should she deign to listen to my suit and
intrust me with the charge of her happiness."

Mrs. Cameron stopped short, gazing into his face with a look of
inexpressible dismay.

"No! Mr. Chillingly," she exclaimed, "this must not be,--cannot be.
Put out of your mind an idea so wild. A young man's senseless
romance. Your parents cannot consent to your union with my niece; I
tell you beforehand they cannot."

"But why?" asked Kenelm, with a slight smile, and not much impressed
by the vehemence of Mrs. Cameron's adjuration.

"Why?" she repeated passionately; and then recovering something of her
habitual weariness of quiet. "The why is easily explained. Mr.
Kenelm Chillingly is the heir of a very ancient house and, I am told,
of considerable estates. Lily Mordaunt is a nobody, an orphan,
without fortune, without connection, the ward of a humbly born artist,
to whom she owes the roof that shelters her; she is without the
ordinary education of a gentlewoman; she has seen nothing of the world
in which you move. Your parents have not the right to allow a son so
young as yourself to throw himself out of his proper sphere by a rash
and imprudent alliance. And, never would I consent, never would
Walter Melville consent, to her entering into any family reluctant to