“No; so that is Lily?  You shall introduce me to her.”

By this time they had passed out of the circle through the little wicket opposite the path by which Kenelm had entered, and opening at once on the lawn.  Here at some distance the children were grouped; some reclined on the grass, some walking to and fro, in the interval of the dance....

Before he had reached the place, Mrs. Braefield met him.

“Lily is come!”

“I know it—­I have seen her.”

“Is not she beautiful?”

“I must see more of her if I am to answer critically; but before you introduce me, may I be permitted to ask who and what is Lily?”

Mrs. Braefield paused a moment before she answered, and yet the answer was brief enough not to need much consideration She is a Miss Mordaunt, an orphan; and as I before told you, resides with her aunt, Mrs. Cameron, a widow.  They have the prettiest cottage you ever saw on the banks of the river, or rather rivulet, about a mile from this place.  Mrs. Cameron is a very good, simple-hearted woman.  As to Lily, I can praise her beauty only with safe conscience, for as yet she is a mere child—­her mind quite unformed.”

“Did you ever meet any man, much less any woman, whose mind was formed?” muttered Kenelm.  “I am sure mine is not, and never will be on this earth.”

Mrs. Braefield did not hear this low-voiced observation.  She was looking about for Lily; and perceiving her at last as the children who surrounded her were dispersing to renew the dance, she took Kenelm’s arm, led him to the young lady, and a formal introduction took place.

Formal as it could be on those sunlit swards, amidst the joy of summer and the laugh of children.  In such scene and such circumstance, formality does not last long.  I know not how it was, but in a very few minutes Kenelm and Lily had ceased to be strangers to each other.  They found themselves seated apart from the rest of the merry-makers, on the bank shadowed by lime-trees; the man listening with downcast eyes, the girl with mobile shifting glances, now on earth, now on heaven, and talking freely, gayly—­like the babble of a happy stream, with a silvery dulcet voice and a sparkle of rippling smiles.

No doubt this is a reversal of the formalities of well-bred life and conventional narrating thereof.  According to them, no doubt, it is for the man to talk and the maid to listen; but I state the facts as they were, honestly.  And Lily knew no more of the formalities of drawing-room life than a skylark fresh from its nest knows of the song-teacher and the cage.  She was still so much of a child.  Mrs. Braefield was right—­her mind was still so unformed.

What she did talk about in that first talk between them that could make the meditative Kenelm listen so mutely, so intently, I know not; at least I could not jot it down on paper.  I fear it was very egotistical, as the talk of children generally is—­about herself and her aunt and her home and her friends—­all her friends seemed children like herself, though younger—­Clemmy the chief of them.  Clemmy was the one who had taken a fancy to Kenelm.  And amidst all the ingenuous prattle there came flashes of a quick intellect, a lively fancy—­nay, even a poetry of expression or of sentiment.  It might be the talk of a child, but certainly not of a silly child.