openly, at her father's door, under the eyes if not within the hearing of her groom, in the face of day. She received me with that innocent, genial, sympathetic trustingness which nothing but purity and nobleness of heart ever can give.

I confess that as I spoke to her that time, and saw her pure calm eyes turned to me, and heard her sympathetic, tender, girlish voice, I thought that between her and me lay a distance as broad as between two creatures of different worlds. It no more occurred to me as possible that such a woman could turn one thought towards me, than that one of the Madonnas of marble in an Italian chapel could have come down from her pedestal in the sacred stillness of the evening, and, like Diana, kissed some mortal worshipper.

She had only known before that she had a cousin whom her father would not suffer her to see; of her uncle she had known nothing. She spoke to her father, and pleaded hard; and all she obtained was permission to write to the other Lilla Lyndon. From Lilla the elder she doubtless received encomiums of my honour and integrity and brotherly affection, and so forth, which led her to confide frankly in me. She did not despair at all of winning over her father; and but for the too frequent presence of her hard and puritanical step-sisters-she was the daughter, the only child, of Mr. Lyndon's second marriage-she might much sooner have prevailed. I learned from her that she had actually found out and tried to redeem, and petted and largely bribed, the wretched old scoundrel, her uncle; and that she really did contrive, by her influence, and still more by her money, to keep him from making any more scandal. How I sickened at the idea of her meeting the odious old hypocrite! and yet I did not dare to hint at what I thought of him. She had, with all her sweetness, a sort of resolute sanctified wilfulness about her; and nothing on earth, except perhaps her father's absolute command, could have kept her from trying to do good to her outcast uncle. Meanwhile the only good of keeping him temporarily decent was that it made her father feel convinced his brother would not dare to annoy him any more, and therefore more than ever determined not to yield to any entreaty on his behalf.

What I confessed to Christina explains all the rest. We met by chance frequently. I found it was Lilla's habit to walk almost every day in Kensington-gardens for half an hour or so. It was only, so to speak, crossing the street from her own house; and her maid was generally with her. We spoke together: she had always something to say to me about the progress of her endeavours on behalf of her cousin. She did sometimes come alone. I did observe the hour and day of her coming, and I did always contrive to be there. To speak to her did always seem to sweeten and purify life for me. I did at last begin to think I was acting a mean and shameful part, although no word had ever passed between us which her mother, were she living, might not have heard. I did begin to feel ashamed of thus meeting a girl whose

father would not, if he could, acknowledge my existence; and, what was worse still, I did feel conscious of a hideous, degrading sense of gratified malignity in the knowledge of the fact. This it was which most distinctly told me of my own growing degradation.

All I had told Christina was true. I did not venture to think with love of Lilla Lyndon. My God, I never thought of loving her. She seemed far too pure and good, too unworldly and childlike in her goodness, to be loved by a half-outworn Bohemian like me. She was not of my ways at all. When I saw her, I only breathed a purer air for a moment, and then went back to my smoke and gaslight and Bohemia again. But Christina spoke unwisely: she counted on a romantic heroism greater than mine, when she told me that such a girl was capable of loving me. Truly, I resolved that I must cease to see her; but then I also made up my mind that I must see her once more, and that I must part from her in such a way that at least she should not despise me. Suppose what Christina said to be true-and I hardly yet believed it-the worst of the evil was partly done, and it could do little more harm, no more harm, to take leave of Lilla Lyndon in such a way as should at least allow her to retain a memory of me which should not be wholly one of contempt.

I did not once think it possible that anything but separation could come of our strange acquaintanceship. Let me do myself justice. So much there was equivocal and weak, and ungenerous and mean, in this chapter of my history, that I must protect the reputation of what little honourable feeling I always retained. Had I loved Lilla with all the passion of a youth's first love, I don't think I should have attempted to induce her to marry me: it would have seemed cruelly unfair to her. There appeared to be some truth in what Christina said. Lilla probably did not and could not know her own mind. Any feeling she might entertain for me was doubtless but the strange, sudden, ephemeral sentiment of a girl-the foolish romantic tenderness a young woman just beyond the schoolgirl's age sometimes feels towards her musicmaster or her riding-master. It will die, and be buried and forgotten in a season: to treat it as a reality would be a treachery and a cruelty. The more we hear from the women of mature years who confide in us, the more do we know that almost every girl of quick fancy and tenderness has had her budding bosom filled for a while with some such whimsical affection, which fades before the realities of life and of love, and is only remembered, if at all, with an easy, half-mirthful memory. To Lilla Lyndon, I thought to myself, I shall soon be such a memory, and no more. If I remain in London, or return to it, I shall hear of her being married to someone who brings her a fortune and a position; and I shall read of her parties in the season, and perhaps some day see in the papers that she has presented her daughter at Court; and we may meet sometimes, or she will come to hear me sing, and she will be friendly and kind, and not ashamed of the fading memory of these

days. I am surely the most unfortunate of beings where any word of love is in question: I seem to be able only to learn what the thing is, or may be, in order to have it taken away from me. I must really make up my mind to be a stern old bachelor, and have done with all thoughts of what is clearly not for me. Yesterday I was a boy too young to marry; now I am getting rather elderly for such ideas. Let me close the chapter altogether; let me see Lilla Lyndon once, only once, and bid her a kind good-bye, and relieve my soul by confessing that I have done wrong, and beg of her still to think of the other Lilla; and then I will go and tell Christina what I have done, and she will at least approve; and so the drudgery of life will just go on as before.

I had walked, thus thinking, along Piccadilly, which was glaring and garish in the sun, and by Apsley House (where, when first I came to London, one might yet see "the Duke" getting into his queerlyshaped cab), into Hyde-park, and so to Kensington-gardens. When I reached the shade of the noble old trees of Kensington, I walked slowly, and lingered and looked anxiously around. I came within sight of the little round basin which lies, so pretty a lakelet, in the bosom of the open, which the trees fringe all round, and whence the glades and vistas stretch out. London has nothing so exquisite as just that spot. With the old red palace near at hand, and no other building in sight, one may ignore the great metropolis altogether, and fancy himself in a park of Anne's days, embedded deep in the heart of some secluded country landscape. A slight breeze to-day ruffled the surface of the little pond, over which the water-fowl were skimming, and the shadows of birds fell broken on it as they flew overhead; and a light cloud could now and then be seen reflected in it. The whole scene was gracious, gentle, tender, with a faint air of melancholy about it, which was but a new grace.

On one of the seats which look upon the little basin I saw Lilla Lyndon sitting. She had a book in her hand, but she was not reading. She looked up from the water as I approached, and greeted me with a frank, bright smile. She was a very handsome girl, with her youthful Madonna contour of face, her pale clear complexion and violet eyes, and dark-brown hair parted smoothly, as was then the fashion, on either brow. As her brilliant red lips parted and showed her white small teeth, a gleam of vivacity for the first time lighted the face, of which the habitual expression was a tender calmness, almost a melancholy beauty, like that of the sunlight on the water beneath her.

"I am glad you have come," she said, after she had given me her hand, "for I came here much earlier than usual to-day, and it is lonely, and I have felt rather weary. I have just been wondering-perhaps you can help me to understand it—why inanimate nature is all so melancholy, and why the least throb of life seems to be joyous. I have been looking at that pool, and the light and the leaves, and they