"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.
"If you are going back to Cromwell Lodge,—to pack up, I suppose,—let me walk with you as far as the bridge."
Kenelm inclined his head assentingly and tacitly as they passed through the garden-gate, winding backwards through the lane which skirted the garden pales; when, at the very spot in which the day after their first and only quarrel Lily's face had been seen brightening through the evergreen, that day on which the old woman, quitting her, said, "God bless you!" and on which the vicar, walking with Kenelm, spoke of her fairy charms; well, just in that spot Lily's face appeared again, not this time brightening through the evergreens, unless the palest gleam of the palest moon can be said to brighten. Kenelm saw, started, halted. His companion, then in the rush of a gladsome talk, of which Kenelm had not heard a word, neither saw nor halted; he walked on mechanically, gladsome, and talking.
Lily stretched forth her hand through the evergreens. Kenelm took it reverentially. This time it was not his hand that trembled.
"Good-by," she said in a whisper, "good-by forever in this world. You understand,—you do understand me. Say that you do."
"I understand. Noble child! noble choice! God bless you! God comfort me!" murmured Kenelm. Their eyes met. Oh, the sadness; and, alas! oh the love in the eyes of both!
Kenelm passed on.