Mrs. Cameron replied by an anxious "No; she is still a child, a very good one; why should I be anxious?" Mrs. Braefield, impulsively,--"Why, your child must now be eighteen." Mrs. Cameron,--"Eighteen--is it possible! How time flies! though in a life so monotonous as mine, time does not seem to fly, it slips on like the lapse of water. Let me think,--eighteen? No, she is but seventeen,--seventeen last May." Mrs. Braefield,--"Seventeen! A very anxious age for a girl; an age in which dolls cease and lovers begin." Mrs. Cameron, not so languidly, but still quietly,--"Lily never cared much for dolls,--never much for lifeless pets; and as to lovers, she does not dream of them." Mrs. Braefield, briskly,--"There is no age after six in which girls do not dream of lovers. And here another question arises. When a girl so lovely as Lily is eighteen next birthday, may not a lover dream of her?" Mrs. Cameron, with that wintry cold tranquillity of manner, which implies that in putting such questions an interrogator is taking a liberty,--"As no lover has appeared, I cannot trouble myself about his dreams." Said Elsie inly to herself, "This is the stupidest woman I ever met!" and aloud to Mrs. Cameron,--"Do you not think that your neighbour, Mr. Chillingly, is a very fine young man?" "I suppose he would be generally considered so. He is very tall." "A handsome face?" "Handsome, is it? I dare say." "What does Lily say?" "About what?" "About Mr. Chillingly. Does she not think him handsome?" "I never asked her." "My dear Mrs. Cameron, would it not be a very pretty match for Lily? The Chillinglys are among the oldest families in Burke's 'Landed Gentry,' and I believe his father, Sir Peter, has a considerable property." For the first time in this conversation Mrs. Cameron betrayed emotion. A sudden flush overspread her countenance, and then left it paler than before. After a pause she recovered her accustomed composure, and replied, rudely,-- "It would be no friend to Lily who could put such notions into her head; and there is no reason to suppose that they have entered into Mr. Chillingly's." "Would you be sorry if they did? Surely you would like your niece to marry well, and there are few chances of her doing so at Moleswich." "Pardon me, Mrs. Braefield, but the question of Lily's marriage I have never discussed, even with her guardian. Nor, considering the childlike nature of her tastes and habits, rather than the years she has numbered, can I think the time has yet come for discussing it at all."