"If I did not dare say it before, I should still less dare to say it now." "Do." There was no longer the stamp of the foot, no longer the flash from her eyes, no longer the wilfulness which said, "I insist;"--" Do;" soothingly, sweetly, imploringly. Thus pushed to it, Kenelm plucked up courage, and not trusting himself to look at Lily, answered brusquely,-- "The quality desirable for men, but more essential to women in proportion as they are fairy-like, though the tritest thing possible, is good temper." Lily made a sudden bound from his side, and joined her aunt, walking through the wet grass. When they reached the garden-gate, Kenelm advanced and opened it. Lily passed him by haughtily; they gained the cottage-door. "I don't ask you in at this hour," said Mrs. Cameron. "It would be but a false compliment." Kenelm bowed and retreated. Lily left her aunt's side, and came towards him, extending her hand. "I shall consider your words, Mr. Chillingly," she said, with a strangely majestic air. "At present I think you are not right. I am not ill-tempered; but--" here she paused, and then added with a loftiness of mien which, had she not been so exquisitely pretty, would have been rudeness--"in any case I forgive you." CHAPTER IX. THERE were a good many pretty villas in the outskirts of Moleswich, and the owners of them were generally well off, and yet there was little of what is called visiting society; owing perhaps to the fact that there not being among these proprietors any persons belonging to what is commonly called "the aristocratic class," there was a vast deal of aristocratic pretension. The family of Mr. A-----, who had enriched himself as a stock-jobber, turned up its nose at the family of Mr. B-----, who had enriched himself still more as a linen-draper, while the family of Mr. B----- showed a very cold shoulder to the family of Mr. C-----, who had become richer than either of them as a pawnbroker, and whose wife wore diamonds, but dropped her h's. England would be a community so aristocratic that there would be no living in it, if one could exterminate what is now called "aristocracy." The Braefields were the only persons who really drew together the antagonistic atoms of the Moleswich society, partly because they were acknowledged to be the first persons there, in right not only of old settlement (the Braefields had held Braefieldville for four generations), but of the wealth derived from those departments of commercial enterprise which are recognized as the highest, and of an establishment considered to be the most elegant in the neighbourhood; principally because Elsie, while exceedingly genial and cheerful in temper, had a certain power of will (as her runaway folly had manifested), and when she got people together compelled them to be civil to each other. She had commenced this gracious career by inaugurating children's parties, and when the children became friends the parents necessarily grew closer together.