following Ralph’s example, took up a seat beside him, and sat a pleased listener to a dialogue, in which the intellectual charm was strong enough, except at very occasional periods, to prevent him from contributing much.  The old lady sat silently by.  She was a trembling, timid body, thin, pale, and emaciated, who appeared to have suffered much, and certainly stood in as much awe of the man whose name she bore as it was well fitting in such a relationship to permit.  She said as little as Forrester, but seemed equally well pleased with the attentions and the conversation of the youth.

“Find you not this place lonesome, Miss Munro?  You have been used, or I mistake much, to a more cheering, a more civilized region.”

“I have, sir; and sometimes I repine—­not so much at the world I live in, as for the world I have lost.  Had I those about me with whom my earlier years were passed, the lonely situation would trouble me slightly.”

She uttered these words with a sorrowful voice, and the moisture gathering in her eyes, gave them additional brightness.  The youth, after some commonplace remark upon the vast difference between moral and physical privations, went on—­

“Perhaps, Miss Munro, with a true knowledge of all the conditions of life, there may be thought little philosophy in the tears we shed at such privations.  The fortune that is unavoidable, however, I have always found the more deplorable for that very reason.  I shall have to watch well, that I too be not surprised with regrets of a like nature with your own, since I find myself constantly recurring, in thought, to a world which perhaps I shall have little more to do with.”

Rising from her seat, and leaving the room as she spoke, with a smile of studied gayety upon her countenance, full also of earnestness and a significance of manner that awakened surprise in the person addressed, the maiden replied—­

“Let me suggest, sir, that you observe well the world you are in; and do not forget, in recurring to that which you leave, that, while deploring the loss of friends in the one, you may be unconscious of the enemies which surround you in the other.  Perhaps, sir, you will find my philosophy in this particular the most useful, if not the most agreeable.”

Wondering at her language, which, though of general remark, and fairly deducible from the conversation, he could not avoid referring to some peculiar origin, the youth rose, and bowed with respectful courtesy as she retired.  His eye followed her form for an instant, while his meditations momentarily wrapped themselves up more and more in inextricable mysteries, from which his utmost ingenuity of thought failed entirely to disentangle him.  In a maze of conjecture he passed from the room into the passage adjoining, and, taking advantage of its long range promenaded with steps, and in a spirit, equally moody and uncertain.  In a little time he was joined by Forrester, who seemed solicitous to divert his mind and relieve his melancholy, by describing the country round, the pursuits, characters, and conditions of the people—­the habits of the miners, and the productiveness of their employ, in a manner inartificial and modest, and sometimes highly entertaining.