"You are right, I dare say;" returned he, absently. He was pondering upon her behaviour after Charley's departure. Argument did not dissuade, and conjecture was baffled in the effort to explain this unexpected movement. They parted in Lexington--Ida to recross the mountains eastward; they, to travel north by way of Harper's Ferry. If there is an enjoyment, which is purely of the intellect, its usurpation is man's high prerogative; the sticklers for woman's "equal rights" will never establish her title to it. The mind masculine may be nourished and exercised, and attain its full size, while the heart is dwarfed and sickly;--as with twin children, one sometimes grows to man's stature, healthy and strong; and the other pines and dies in childhood. In woman, intellect and the affections are united from their birth;--like the Siamese brothers, one refuses food, which is denied its companion; and who dare peril the life of both by severing the ligament which joins them? Ida's route was through the garden-spot of our State--the magnificent Valley, with its heaven-bathed, impregnable eyries, among which our country's Father selected a resting-place for Freedom's standard--America's Thermopylae, should the invader's power drive him from every other hold;--where one may travel for days, encircled by the Briarean arms, the sister ridges stretch, in amity, towards each other--each rolling its streams and clouds down to the verdant plains between;--where morning and evening, the sun marshals his crimson and gold-colored array upon the purple heights, which are coeval with him and Time; and flings shadows and hues athwart them, in his day's march, he never vouchsafes to Lowland countries;--and this region was traversed with not a thought beyond a feverish wish to be at her journey's end and rest. She stopped in Richmond but one night. Mr. Read and his daughter were out of town, and she went to a hotel. At dawn she was upon the road, with no attendant but the driver of her hack. Rachel had gone to Sunnybank a month before, to see her relations, little expecting her mistress to come for her. Ida's spirits and health declined alarmingly, now that the necessity of eluding suspicion was over. She had never been sick a day in her life; but she began to feel that mental ills may be aggravated by bodily disease. The unnatural tension had been maintained too long. When Sunnybank appeared, she was unable to raise her head to look at it. The negroes flocked out at the phenomenon of a travelling carriage in the disused avenue; and loud were their astonishment and compassion, as they recognised its occupant.