“It is true,” said he, after a pause,--“it is true, I have had luck with me. The very trees under whose branches we are walking, could they but speak, might bear witness to a time when I strolled here as poor and as hopeless as the meanest outcast that walks the high-road. I had not one living soul to say, 'Be of good cheer, your time will come yet.' My case had even more than the ordinary obstacles to success; for fate had placed me where every day, every hour of my life, should show me the disparity between myself and those high-born great to whose station I aspired. If you only knew, Lady Augusta,” added he, in a tone tremulous with emotion, “what store I laid on any passing kindness,--the simplest word, the merest look,--how even a gesture or a glance lighted hope within my heart, or made it cold and dreary within me, you 'd wonder that a creature such as this could nerve itself to the stern work of life.” “I was but a child at the time you speak of,” said she, looking down bashfully; “but I remember you perfectly.” “Indeed!” said he, with an accent that implied pleasure. “So well,” continued she, “that there is not a spot in the wood where we used to take our lesson-books in summer, but lives still associated in my mind with those hours, so happy they were!” “I always feared that I had left very different memories behind me here,” said he, in a low voice. “You were unjust, then,” said she, in a tone still lower,--“unjust to yourself and to us.” They walked on without speaking, a strange mysterious consciousness that each was in the other's thoughts standing in place of converse between them. At length, stopping suddenly in front of a little rocky cavern, over which aquatic plants were drooped, she said, “Do you remember calling that 'Calypso's grotto'? It bears no other name still.” “I remember more,” said he; and then stopped in some confusion.