After church they took a stroll by the seaside, walking towards Cliftonville, and avoiding as much as possible the Brightonian throng of well-dressed church-goers, airing their finery on the Parade. They had plenty to say to each other, that fond lover’s talk which wells exhaustless from youthful hearts. Miss Glenlyne rarely left her bedroom—where she muddled through the morning attended by Spilling—until the day was half over, so Lucille felt herself at liberty till two o’clock. As the clock struck two, the lovers reëntered the shades of Selbrook-place. Miss Glenlyne was in her favourite chair by the drawing-room fire, looking much smarter, and sooth to say even fresher and cleaner, than when Lucius had last beheld her. This improvement was Lucille’s work. She had found handsome garments in her aunt’s roomy wardrobe,—garments left to the despoiling moth, or discolouring mildew, and had suggested emendations of all kinds in Miss Glenlyne’s toilet. Dressed in a pearl-gray watered silk, and draped with a white china-crape shawl, the old lady looked far more agreeable than in her dingy black silk gown and dirty olive-green cashmere. Spilling had contrived to keep these things out of their owner’s sight and memory, in the pious hope of possessing them herself by and by, very little the worse for wear. The old lady received Lucius with extreme graciousness. Spilling was invisible, having been relegated to her original position of maid, and banished to the housekeeper’s-room. A nice little luncheon was served in the back drawing-room, at which Miss Glenlyne again produced a bottle of champagne, an unaccustomed libation to the genius of hospitality. The meal was cheerful almost to merriment, and the old lady appeared thoroughly to enjoy the novel pleasure of youthful society. She encouraged the lovers to talk of themselves, their plans and prospects, cordially entered into the discussion of their future, and Lucius perceived, by many a trifling indication, how firm a hold Lucille had already won upon her aunt’s heart. After luncheon Miss Glenlyne would have dismissed them to walk on the Parade, but Lucille insisted on staying at home to read to her aunt. She read a good deal of the _Observer_, through which medium Miss Glenlyne took the news of the week, in a dry and compressed form, like Liebig’s Extract. After the _Observer_ the conversation became literary, and Miss Glenlyne gave them her opinion of the Lake poets, Sir Walter Scott, Monk Lewis, Byron, Mrs. Radcliffe, and the minor lights who had illumined the world of letters in her youth. She clung fondly to the belief that ‘Thalaba’ was better than anything that had been done or ever could be done by that young man called Tennyson, with whose name rumour had acquainted her some years back, but whose works she had not yet looked into. And finally, for the gratification of the young folks, she recited, in a quavering voice, Southey’s famous verses upon ‘Lodore.’