And Lilias herself looked out from the brown tints of this still life, with her serene looks and every-day apparel. The painter and his subject had, both of them, too much taste to choose the vulgar, full dress, sitting-for-a-portrait attitude. A certain visionary poetic grace and fitness were in all the adjuncts. The contemplative, pensive look, the serene pale face, the pure, calm, melancholy brow, were rendered with a graceful hand; and the old man named the picture well when he called it the Lily of Mossgray. “But Hope would not have arranged it so,” said Helen, when she had sufficiently admired the portrait. “Hope would have made a group instead of that single spiritual face.” “And drawn me with breast-plate and rusty spear,” said Lilias, “about to set out on a foray; because my name, Mossgray, reminds Hope of the Laird’s Jock, and his brethren of the ballad-days.” “Nay,” said Helen, “Hope has caught the graceful spirit of the ballads better than that; but she would have changed the scene to the old hall of the tower, and put breast-plate and steel-jack on a brotherhood of Graemes, and placed you, with your pensive look, in the midst, sending them forth, sadly and bravely, not on a foray, but on a truer errand, if it were to the Flodden that needed them. And I think almost that this same face, with that breath of sadness about it, might have suited the old hall well, and the armed men who were going forth, with a peradventure that they would never return; and the Lily of Mossgray would do honour to Hope’s fancy, if the painter had thought of her as the Laird’s Lilias.” As she ceased, she slightly turned her head. The banker was looking in eagerly--looking at her. As their eyes met, both withdrew hastily; Helen with a tingling thrill of shy pride, and Mr Oswald with a complication of feelings difficult to describe. Strong determination not to yield, strangely mingled with an absolute _liking_ for the girl who praised his Hope so kindly, and to whom Hope clung with such affection. It was a very sudden feeling, but his eyes followed her unawares, almost with pride. William too was looking proudly after the rapid figure in the distance. Hope, at home, was thinking proudly, that no one in Fendie or in Edinburgh was like Helen Buchanan; and the banker, in his secret heart, acknowledged that they were right, while again he repeated his resolution--never! CHAPTER XVI. “He’s gentle--of all sorts beloved--and indeed much in the heart of the world.”--AS YOU LIKE IT.