Kenelm Chillingly — Volume 03 eBook

Thus speaking, Mrs. Campion again raised her eyes from her work, stealing a sidelong glance at Cecilia; and her mother-like heart sank within her, on noticing how suddenly pale the girl had become, and how her lips quivered.  Mrs. Campion had enough knowledge of life to feel aware that she had committed a grievous blunder.  In that earliest stage of virgin affection, when a girl is unconscious of more than a certain vague interest in one man which distinguishes him from others in her thoughts,—­if she hears him unjustly disparaged, if some warning against him is implied, if the probability that he will never be more to her than a passing acquaintance is forcibly obtruded on her,—­suddenly that vague interest, which might otherwise have faded away with many another girlish fancy, becomes arrested, consolidated; the quick pang it occasions makes her involuntarily, and for the first time, question herself, and ask, “Do I love?” But when a girl of a nature so delicate as that of Cecilia Travers can ask herself the question, “Do I love?” her very modesty, her very shrinking from acknowledging that any power over her thoughts for weal or for woe can be acquired by a man, except through the sanction of that love which only becomes divine in her eyes when it is earnest and pure and self-devoted, makes her prematurely disposed to answer “yes.”  And when a girl of such a nature in her own heart answers “yes” to such a question, even if she deceive herself at the moment, she begins to cherish the deceit till the belief in her love becomes a reality.  She has adopted a religion, false or true, and she would despise herself if she could be easily converted.

Mrs. Campion had so contrived that she had forced that question upon Cecilia, and she feared, by the girl’s change of countenance, that the girl’s heart had answered “yes.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

WHILE the conversation just narrated took place, Kenelm had walked forth to pay a visit to Will Somers.  All obstacles to Will’s marriage were now cleared away; the transfer of lease for the shop had been signed, and the banns were to be published for the first time on the following Sunday.  We need not say that Will was very happy.  Kenelm then paid a visit to Mrs. Bowles, with whom he stayed an hour.  On reentering the Park, he saw Travers, walking slowly, with downcast eyes and his hands clasped behind him (his habit when in thought).  He did not observe Kenelm’s approach till within a few feet of him, and he then greeted his guest in listless accents, unlike his usual cheerful tones.

“I have been visiting the man you have made so happy,” said Kenelm.

“Who can that be?”

“Will Somers.  Do you make so many people happy that your reminiscence of them is lost in their number?”

Travers smiled faintly, and shook his head.

Kenelm went on.  “I have also seen Mrs. Bowles, and you will be pleased to hear that Tom is satisfied with his change of abode:  there is no chance of his returning to Graveleigh; and Mrs. Bowles took very kindly to my suggestion that the little property you wish for should be sold to you, and, in that case, she would remove to Luscombe to be near her son.”