I was thus engaged one morning, when I heard the voice of Murray enquiring for me. Longing to meet once more the glance of a friendly eye, I was more than half tempted to retract my general order for his exclusion. I had only a moment to weigh the question, yet the prudent side prevailed; because, if the truth must be told, I chanced just then to look into my glass; and was ill satisfied with the appearance of my swoln eyes and colourless cheeks; so well did the motives of my unpremeditated actions furnish a clue to the original defects of my mind. However, though I dare not say that my decision was wise, I may at least call it fortunate; since it probably saved me from one of those frothy passions which idleness, such as I was condemned to, sometimes engenders in the heads of those whose hearts are by nature placed in unassailable security. This ordinary form of the passion was certainly the only one in which it could then have affected me; for what woman, educated as I had been, early initiated like me into heartless dissipation, was ever capable of that deep, generous, self-devoting sentiment which, in retirement, springs amid mutual charities and mutual pursuits; links itself with every interest of this life; and twines itself even with the hopes of immortality? My affections and my imagination were yet to receive their culture in the native land of strong attachment, ere I could be capable of such a sentiment. As I persevered in excluding Murray, the only being with whom I could now exchange sympathies was my new Highland friend, Cecil Graham. I often saw her; and when I had a little conquered my disgust at the filth and disorder of her dwelling, I found my visits there as amusing as many of more 'pomp and circumstance.' She was to me an entirely new specimen of human character; an odd mixture of good sense and superstition,--of minute parsimony and liberal kindness,--of shrewd observation, and a land of romantic abstraction from sensible objects. Every thing that was said or done, suggested to her memory an adventure of some 'gallant Graham,' or, to her fancy, the agency of some unseen being.