think me wrong."

"Not wrong in principle, as I said before, Mr. Grahame, but--excuse
me--you required me to be frank--would it not have been better to have
made this withdrawal gradually and quietly, in such a manner that Lilian
would not have noticed it, instead of giving her the pain of this abrupt
severance of the ties between you?"

"A great deal better, sir," said Mr. Grahame, coloring with wonderful
feeling, and fixing his clear, keen eye full on Mr. Trevanion,--"a great
deal better if I wished to sever those ties--a great deal better if I
would have Lilian believe that we had grown cold and indifferent to her.
But, my dear child," and he turned to her, and taking both her hands,
spoke very earnestly--"believe me, when I tell you, that you will find
few among those who see you every day, that love you so warmly as the
friends who have loved you from your birth, and who now stand away from
you only because they will not be in the way of what the world considers
higher fortunes for you if you desire them. To leave you free to choose
for yourself, is the strongest proof of love we could give you, and I
repeat, when you have tried all that this new life has to give
you--tried it for six months--if your heart still turns with its old
love to those early friends, you will give them joy indeed."

Mr. Grahame paused, but neither Mr. Trevanion nor Lilian attempted to
reply to him for some minutes--at length she raised her eyes, and said,

"You did not think of this when I left you--what has changed your
mind--I will not say your _heart_--towards me?"

"You are right not to say our hearts, Lilian; but, indeed, even my mind
has not been changed--I thought then as I think now--but I could not
persuade others of our family to think with me. Now, however, they all
feel that they cannot keep up their old friendly intercourse with you
without mortification to themselves, and pain to you. And, as I said
before, we were none of us willing to withdraw from that intercourse
without giving you our reasons for it, lest you should think we had
grown indifferent to you."

Mr. Grahame soon departed, leaving Lilian saddened and Mr. Trevanion
perplexed by his visit. "Singular old man!" this gentleman exclaimed to
himself more than once, in reflecting on all that Mr. Grahame had said;
so difficult is it for those whose minds have been forced into the
strait forms of conventionalism to comprehend the dictates of
untrammelled common se