I yielded apathetically, and my companion hurried me away, nervously looking behind every now and then, and declaring, "She had never gone through anything to equal this, never!" Indeed by her two friends it was considered quite an adventure, and served to enhance the mystery with which it pleased their imagination to surround me. I had longed passionately for the favour Mrs. Gray had granted, but to have obtained it only added to my secret torment. I had now been six weeks with the kind lady, but what with the dull monotonous life I led in that dull house and the grief of being severed from those I loved so dearly, I again became languid, if not ill. Mrs. Gray's instructions were to let me want for nothing; she at once called in a physician, who gave me plenty of bitter physic to drink, and ordered me to take more exercise. We lived within half an hour's walk of Kensington Gardens, and every fine day Mrs. Gray conscientiously took me there to spend the interval between dinner and tea. She sat down on one of the benches and read, whilst I wandered away at will. Those gardens are very beautiful. They have verdure, water, rare fowl, singing birds, flowers wild and cultivated, warm sunshine, deep shade, and brooding over all that solemn charm which lingers around ancient trees and woodland places. I was then studying botany, and my chief pleasure was to look out for wild flowers or linger in some solitary spot. I remember one well,--a solemn grove of elms and beeches, sombre and quiet as a cloister. I often sought its gloom, led by that instinct which makes the stricken deer fly to the shade. When I sat down at the moss-covered base of those venerable trees, something of the soothing calmness of pure nature seemed to fall on my spirit, with their vast shadow. Above me sang the thrush and blackbird, whom I had so often heard in the lanes around my old home. They were happy; to me their song sounded neither gay nor joyful, but wild, sweet, and mournful as that of the enchanted bird heard by bonny Kilmeny in the glen. One day, in my search for botanical specimens, I wandered further than usual. At length I came to a circular hollow enclosed by fine old trees, of which one lay extended on the earth, uprooted in a recent storm. Its vast boughs were beginning to wither, and its huge roots rose brown and bare, for the first time beholding light; but of these signs, though I noted them as we will note things even when our very hearts are stirred within us. I thought not then; for at once I had seen and recognized Cornelius, who sat on the trunk of the tree sketching.