“Oh, that is true,” cried Lily; “but even when we are grown up there must be times in which we should so long to see a ghost, and feel what a comfort, what a joy it would be.” “I understand you. If some one very dear to us had vanished from our life; if we felt the anguish of the separation so intensely as to efface the thought that life, as you said so well, ‘never dies;’ well, yes, then I can conceive that the mourner would yearn to have a glimpse of the vanished one, were it but to ask the sole and only question he could desire to put, ‘Art thou happy? May I hope that we shall meet again, never to part,--never?’” Kenelm’s voice trembled as he spoke, tears stood in his eyes. A melancholy--vague, unaccountable, overpowering--passed across his heart, as the shadow of some dark-winged bird passes over a quiet stream. “You have never yet felt this?” asked Lily doubtingly, in a soft voice, full of tender pity, stopping short and looking into his face. “I? No. I have never yet lost one whom I so loved and so yearned to see again. I was but thinking that such losses may befall us all ere we too vanish out of sight.” “Lily!” called forth Mrs. Cameron, halting at the gate of the burial-ground. “Yes, auntie?” “Mr. Emlyn wants to know how far you have got in ‘Numa Pompilius.’ Come and answer for yourself.” “Oh, those tiresome grown-up people!” whispered Lily, petulantly, to Kenelm. “I do like Mr. Emlyn; he is one of the very best of men. But still he is grown up, and his ‘Numa Pompilius’ is so stupid.” “My first French lesson-book. No, it is not stupid. Read on. It has hints of the prettiest fairy tale I know, and of the fairy in especial who bewitched my fancies as a boy.” By this time they had gained the gate of the burial-ground. “What fairy tale? what fairy?” asked Lily, speaking quickly. “She was a fairy, though in heathen language she is called a nymph,--Egeria. She was the link between men and gods to him she loved; she belongs to the race of gods. True, she, too, may vanish, but she can never die.” “Well, Miss Lily,” said the vicar, “and how far in the book I lent you,--‘Numa Pompilius.’” “Ask me this day next week.” “I will; but mind you are to translate as you go on. I must see the translation.” “Very well. I will do my best,” answered Lily meekly. Lily now walked by the vicar’s side, and Kenelm by Mrs. Cameron’s, till they reached Grasmere. “I will go on with you to the bridge, Mr. Chillingly,” said the vicar, when the ladies had disappeared within their garden. “We had little time to look over my books, and, by the by, I hope you at least took the Juvenal.” “No, Mr. Emlyn; who can quit your house with an inclination for satire? I must come some morning and select a volume from those works which give pleasant views of life and bequeath favourable impressions of mankind. Your wife, with whom I have had an interesting conversation, upon the principles of aesthetical philosophy--”