Lily advanced, and held out her hand very timidly. Kenelm touched rather than clasped it. His own strong hand trembled like a leaf. He ventured but one glance at her face. All the bloom had died out of it, but the expression seemed to him wondrously, cruelly tranquil.
“Your betrothed! your future bride!” he said to the artist, with a mastery over his emotion rendered less difficult by the single glance at that tranquil face. “I wish you joy. All happiness to you, Miss Mordaunt. You have made a noble choice.”
He looked round for his hat; it lay at his feet, but he did not see it; his eyes wandering away with uncertain vision, like those of a sleep-walker.
Mrs. Cameron picked up the hat and gave it to him.
“Thank you,” he said meekly; then with a smile half sweet, half bitter, “I have so much to thank you for, Mrs. Cameron.”
“But you are not going already,—just as I enter too. Hold! Mrs. Cameron tells me you are lodging with my old friend Jones. Come and stop a couple of days with us: we can find you a room; the room over your butterfly cage, eh, Fairy?”
“Thank you too. Thank you all. No; I must be in London by the first train.”
Speaking thus, he had found his way to the door, bowed with the quiet grace that characterized all his movements, and was gone.
“Pardon his abruptness, Lily; he too loves; he too is impatient to find a betrothed,” said the artist gayly: “but now he knows my dearest secret, I think I have a right to know his; and I will try.”
He had scarcely uttered the words before he too had quitted the room and overtaken Kenelm just at the threshold.