“Brother, I have something to tell you,” said Miss Barrington, who was eager to communicate the news she had just heard of General Conyers; and while she drew him to one side, the young people still stood there, each seeming to expect the other would make some advance towards acquaintanceship. Conyers tried to say some commonplace,--some one of the fifty things that would have occurred so naturally in presence of a young lady to whom he had been just presented; but he could think of none, or else those that _he_ thought of seemed inappropriate. How talk, for instance, of the world and its pleasures to one who had been estranged from it! While he thus struggled and contended with himself, she suddenly started as if with a flash of memory, and said, “How forgetful!” “Forgetful!--and of what?” asked he. “I have left the book I was reading to grandpapa on the rock where we were sitting. I must go and fetch it.” “May I go with you?” asked he, half timidly. “Yes, if you like.” “And your book,--what was it?” “Oh, a charming book,--such a delightful story! So many people one would have loved to know!--such scenes one would have loved to visit!--incidents, too, that keep the heart in intense anxiety, that you wonder how he who imagined them could have sustained the thrilling interest, and held his own heart so long in terrible suspense!” “And the name of this wonderful book is--” “'Waverley.'” “I have read it,” said he, coldly. “And have you not longed to be a soldier? Has not your heart bounded with eagerness for a life of adventure and peril?” “I am a soldier,” said he, quietly. “Indeed!” replied she, slowly, while her steadfast glance scanned him calmly and deliberately. “You find it hard to recognize as a soldier one dressed as I am, and probably wonder how such a life as this consorts with enterprise and danger. Is not that what is passing in your mind?” “Mayhap,” said she, in a low voice. “It is all because the world has changed a good deal since Waverley's time.” “How sorry I am to hear it!” “Nay, for your sake it is all the better. Young ladies have a pleasanter existence now than they had sixty years since. They lived then lives of household drudgery or utter weariness.” “And what have they now?” asked she, eagerly. “What have they not! All that can embellish life is around them; they are taught in a hundred ways to employ the faculties which give to existence its highest charm. They draw, sing, dance, ride, dress becomingly, read what may give to their conversation an added elegance and make their presence felt as an added lustre.” “How unlike all this was our convent life!” said she, slowly. “The beads in my rosary were not more alike than the days that followed each other, and but for the change of season I should have thought life a dreary sleep. Oh, if you but knew what a charm there is in the changeful year to one who lives in any bondage!”