Nan had accepted willingly the offered apologies and gayly wished her aunt a pleasant dream, but being wide awake she gladly made use of the quiet time to send a letter home, and to stroll down the garden afterward.  It all seemed so unlike what she had expected, yet her former thoughts about her aunt were much more difficult to recall as every hour went by and made the impression of actual things more distinct.  Her fancied duty to a lonely old lady who mourned over a sad past seemed quite quixotic when she watched this brisk woman come and go without any hindrance of age, or, now that the first meeting was over, any appearance of former melancholy.  As our friend went down the garden she told herself that she was glad to have come; it was quite right, and it was very pleasant, though there was no particular use in staying there long, and after a few days she would go away.  Somehow her life seemed a great deal larger for this new experience, and she would try to repeat the visit occasionally.  She wished to get Dunport itself by heart, but she had become so used to giving the best of herself to her studies, that she was a little shy of the visiting and the tea-parties and the apparently fruitless society life of which she had already learned something.  “I suppose the doctor would say it is good for me,” said Nan, somewhat grimly, “but I think it is most satisfactory to be with the persons whose interests and purposes are the same as one’s own.”  The feeling of a lack of connection with the people whom she had met made life appear somewhat blank.  She had already gained a certain degree of affection for her aunt; to say the least she was puzzled to account for such an implacable hostility as had lasted for years in the breast of a person so apparently friendly and cordial in her relations with her neighbors.  Our heroine was slow to recognize in her relative the same strength of will and of determination which made the framework of her own character,—­an iron-like firmness of structure which could not be easily shaken by the changes or opinions of other people.  Miss Prince’s acquaintances called her a very set person, and were shy of intruding into her secret fastnesses.  There were all the traits of character which are necessary for the groundwork of an enterprising life, but Miss Prince seemed to have neither inherited nor acquired any high aims or any especial and fruitful single-heartedness, so her gifts of persistence and self-confidence had ranked themselves for the defense of a comparatively unimportant and commonplace existence.  As has been said, she forbade, years before, any mention of her family troubles, and had lived on before the world as if they could be annihilated, and not only were not observable, but never had been.  In a more thoughtful and active circle of social life the contrast between her rare capacity and her unnoticeable career would have been more striking.  She stood as a fine representative of the old school, but it could not be justly said that she was a forward scholar, since, however sure of some of her early lessons, she was most dull and reluctant before new ones of various enlightening and uplifting descriptions.