FROM this state, half comatose, half unconscious, Kenelm was roused slowly, reluctantly. Something struck softly on his cheek,--again a little less softly; he opened his eyes, they fell first upon two tiny rosebuds, which, on striking his face, had fallen on his breast; and then looking up, he saw before him, in an opening of the trellised circle, a female child's laughing face. Her hand was still uplifted charged with another rosebud, but behind the child's figure, looking over her shoulder and holding back the menacing arm, was a face as innocent but lovelier far,--the face of a girl in her first youth, framed round with the blossoms that festooned the trellise. How the face became the flowers! It seemed the fairy spirit of them. Kenelm started and rose to his feet. The child, the one whom he had so ungallantly escaped from ran towards him through a wicket in the circle. Her companion disappeared. "Is it you?" said Kenelm to the child, "you who pelted me so cruelly? Ungrateful creature! Did I not give you the best strawberries in the dish and all my own cream?" "But why did you run away and hide yourself when you ought to be dancing with me?" replied the young lady, evading, with the instinct of her sex, all answer to the reproach she had deserved. "I did not run away, and it is clear that I did not mean to hide myself, since you so easily found me out. But who was the young lady with you? I suspect she pelted me too, for she seems to have run away to hide herself." "No, she did not pelt you; she wanted to stop me, and you would have had another rosebud--oh, so much bigger!--if she had not held back my arm. Don't you know her,--don't you know Lily?" "No; so that is Lily? You shall introduce me to her." By this time they had passed out of the circle through the little wicket opposite the path by which Kenelm had entered, and opening at once on the lawn. Here at some distance the children were grouped, some reclined on the grass, some walking to and fro, in the interval of the dance. In the space between the group and the trellise Lily was walking alone and quickly. The child left Kenelm's side and ran after her friend, soon overtook, but did not succeed in arresting her steps. Lily did not pause till she had reached the grassy ball-room, and here all the children came round her and shut out her delicate form from Kenelm's sight. Before he had reached the place, Mrs. Braefield met him. "Lily is come!" "I know it: I have seen her." "Is not she beautiful?" "I must see more of her if I am to answer critically; but before you introduce me, may I be permitted to ask who and what is Lily?"