"Emily," continued Tom, with an unruffled placidity,--which, considering the aggravating bitterness for which Kenelm had exchanged his wonted dulcitudes of indifferentism, was absolutely saintlike, "Emily knows that if she were my wife I should be proud of her, and will esteem me the more if she feels how resolved I am that she shall never be ashamed of me." "Pardon me, Tom," said Kenelm softened, and laying his hand on his friend's shoulder with brotherlike tenderness. "Nature has made you a thorough gentleman; and you could not think and speak more nobly if you had come into the world as the head of all the Howards." CHAPTER IV. TOM went away the next morning. He declined to see Jessie again, saying curtly, "I don't wish the impression made on me the other evening to incur a chance of being weakened." Kenelm was in no mood to regret his friend's departure. Despite all the improvement in Tom's manners and culture, which raised him so much nearer to equality with the polite and instructed heir of the Chillinglys, Kenelm would have felt more in sympathy and rapport with the old disconsolate fellow-wanderer who had reclined with him on the grass, listening to the minstrel's talk or verse, than he did with the practical, rising citizen of Luscombe. To the young lover of Lily Mordaunt there was a discord, a jar, in the knowledge that the human heart admits of such well-reasoned, well-justified transfers of allegiance; a Jessie to-day, or an Emily to-morrow; "La reine est morte: vive la reine" An hour or two after Tom had gone, Kenelm found himself almost mechanically led towards Braefieldville. He had instinctively divined Elsie's secret wish with regard to himself and Lily, however skilfully she thought she had concealed it. At Braefieldville he should hear talk of Lily, and in the scenes where Lily had been first beheld. He found Mrs. Braefield alone in the drawing-room, seated by a table covered with flowers, which she was assorting and intermixing for the vases to which they were destined. It struck him that her manner was more reserved than usual and somewhat embarrassed; and when, after a few preliminary matters of small talk, he rushed boldly /in medias res/ and asked if she had seen Mrs. Cameron lately, she replied briefly, "Yes, I called there the other day," and immediately changed the conversation to the troubled state of the Continent. Kenelm was resolved not to be so put off, and presently returned to the charge. "The other day you proposed an excursion to the site of the Roman villa, and said you would ask Mrs. Cameron to be of the party. Perhaps you have forgotten it?" "No; but Mrs. Cameron declines. We can ask the Emlyns instead. He will be an excellent /cicerone/." "Excellent! Why did Mrs. Cameron decline?" Elsie hesitated, and then lifted her clear brown eyes to his face, with a sudden determination to bring matters to a crisis.