SOMEWHAT more than another year has rolled away. It is early spring in London. The trees in the park and squares are budding into leaf and blossom. Leopold Travers has had a brief but serious conversation with his daughter, and now gone forth on horseback. Handsome and graceful still, Leopold Travers when in London is pleased to find himself scarcely less the fashion with the young than he was when himself in youth. He is now riding along the banks of the Serpentine, no one better mounted, better dressed, better looking, or talking with greater fluency on the topics which interest his companions.

Cecilia is in the smaller drawing-room, which is exclusively appropriated to her use, alone with Lady Glenalvon.

LADY GLENALVON.—“I own, my dear, dear Cecilia, that I arrange myself at last on the side of your father. How earnestly at one time I had hoped that Kenelm Chillingly might woo and win the bride that seemed to me most fitted to adorn and to cheer his life, I need not say. But when at Exmundham he asked me to befriend his choice of another, to reconcile his mother to that choice,—evidently not a suitable one,—I gave him up. And though that affair is at an end, he seems little likely ever to settle down to practical duties and domestic habits, an idle wanderer over the face of the earth, only heard of in remote places and with strange companions. Perhaps he may never return to England.”

CECILIA.—“He is in England now, and in London.”

LADY GLENALVON.—“You amaze me! Who told you so?”

CECILIA.—“His father, who is with him. Sir Peter called yesterday, and spoke to me so kindly.” Cecilia here turned aside her face to conceal the tears that had started to her eyes.

LADY GLENALVON.—“Did Mr. Travers see Sir Peter?”

CECILIA.—“Yes; and I think it was something that passed between them which made my father speak to me—for the first time—almost sternly.”

LADY GLENALVON.—“In urging Chillingly Gordon’s suit?”

CECILIA.—“Commanding me to reconsider my rejection of it. He has contrived to fascinate my father.”

LADY GLENALVON.—“So he has me. Of course you might choose among other candidates for your hand one of much higher worldly rank, of much larger fortune; yet, as you have already rejected them, Gordon’s merits become still more entitled to a fair hearing. He has already leaped into a position that mere rank and mere wealth cannot attain. Men of all parties speak highly of his parliamentary abilities. He is already marked in public opinion as a coming man,—a future minister of the highest grade. He has youth and good looks; his moral character is without a blemish: yet his manners are so free from affected austerity, so frank, so genial. Any woman might be pleased with his companionship; and you, with your intellect, your culture,—you, so born for high station,—you of all women might be proud to partake the anxieties of his career and the rewards of his ambition.”

CECILIA (clasping her hands tightly together).—“I cannot, I cannot. He may be all you say,—I know nothing against Mr. Chillingly Gordon,—but my whole nature is antagonistic to his, and even were it not so—”

She stopped abruptly, a deep blush warming up her fair face, and retreating to leave it coldly pale.

LADY GLENALVON (tenderly kissing her).—“You have not, then, even yet conquered the first maiden fancy; the ungrateful one is still remembered?”

Cecilia bowed her head on her friend’s breast, and murmured imploringly, “Don’t speak against him; he has been so unhappy. How much he must have loved!”

“But it is not you whom he loved.”

“Something here, something at my heart, tells me that he will love me yet; and, if not, I am contented to be his friend.”