Kenelm Chillingly — Complete eBook

But Cecilia,—­what impression did she create upon the young visitor?  Was he alive to the charm of her rare beauty, to the grace of a mind sufficiently stored for commune with those who love to think and to imagine, and yet sufficiently feminine and playful to seize the sportive side of realities, and allow their proper place to the trifles which make the sum of human things?  An impression she did make, and that impression was new to him and pleasing.  Nay, sometimes in her presence and sometimes when alone, he fell into abstracted consultations with himself, saying, “Kenelm Chillingly, now that thou hast got back into thy proper skin, dost thou not think that thou hadst better remain there?  Couldst thou not be contented with thy lot as erring descendant of Adam, if thou couldst win for thy mate so faultless a descendant of Eve as now flits before thee?” But he could not abstract from himself any satisfactory answer to the question he had addressed to himself.

Once he said abruptly to Travers, as, on their return from their rambles, they caught a glimpse of Cecilia’s light form bending over the flower-beds on the lawn, “Do you admire Virgil?”

“To say truth I have not read Virgil since I was a boy; and, between you and me, I then thought him rather monotonous.”

“Perhaps because his verse is so smooth in its beauty?”

“Probably.  When one is very young one’s taste is faulty; and if a poet is not faulty, we are apt to think he wants vivacity and fire.”

“Thank you for your lucid explanation,” answered Kenelm, adding musingly to himself, “I am afraid I should yawn very often if I were married to a Miss Virgil.”

CHAPTER XVI.

THE house of Mr. Travers contained a considerable collection of family portraits, few of them well painted, but the Squire was evidently proud of such evidences of ancestry.  They not only occupied a considerable space on the walls of the reception rooms, but swarmed into the principal sleeping-chambers, and smiled or frowned on the beholder from dark passages and remote lobbies.  One morning, Cecilia, on her way to the china closet, found Kenelm gazing very intently upon a female portrait consigned to one of those obscure receptacles by which through a back staircase he gained the only approach from the hall to his chamber.

“I don’t pretend to be a good judge of paintings,” said Kenelm, as Cecilia paused beside him; “but it strikes me that this picture is very much better than most of those to which places of honour are assigned in your collection.  And the face itself is so lovely that it would add an embellishment to the princeliest galleries.”

“Yes,” said Cecilia, with a half-sigh.  “The face is lovely, and the portrait is considered one of Lely’s rarest masterpieces.  It used to hang over the chimney-piece in the drawing-room.  My father had it placed here many years ago.”