My mother thought a school life would counteract the influence of her own solitary habits and example. She did not wish me to be a hermit child, and for this reason accepted the offer Mr. Regulus made through the minister to become a pupil in the academy. She might have sent me to the free schools in the neighborhood, but she did not wish me to form associations incompatible with the refinement she had so carefully cultivated in me. She might have continued to teach me at home, for she was mistress of every accomplishment, but she thought the discipline of an institution like this would give tone and firmness to my poetic and dreaming mind. She wanted me to become practical,--she wanted to see the bark growing and hardening over the exposed and delicate fibres. She anticipated for me the cold winds and beating rains of an adverse destiny. I knew she did, though she had never told me so in words. I read it in the anxious, wistful, prophetic expression of her soft, deep black eyes, whenever they rested on me. Those beautiful, mysterious eyes! There was a mystery about her that gave power to her excellence and beauty. Through the twilight shades of her sorrowful loneliness, I could trace only the dim outline of her past life. I was fatherless,--and annihilation, as well as death, seemed the doom of him who had given me being. I was forbidden to mention his name. No similitude of his features, no token of his existence, cherished by love and hallowed by reverence, invested him with the immortality of memory. It was as if he had never been. Thus mantled in mystery, his image assumed a sublimity and grandeur in my imagination, dark and oppressive as night. I would sit and ponder over his mystic attributes, till he seemed like those gods of mythology, who, veiling their divinity in clouds, came down and wooed the daughters of men. A being so lovely and good as my mother would never have loved a common mortal. Perhaps he was some royal exile, who had found her in his wanderings a beauteous flower, but dared not transplant her to the garden of kings. My mother little thought, when I sat in my simple calico dress, my school-book open on my knees, conning my daily lessons, or seeming so to do, what wild, absurd ideas were revelling in my brain. She little thought how high the "aspiring blood" of mine mounted in that lowly, woodland cottage. I told her the history of my humiliation, passion, and flight,--of Richard Clyde's brave defence and undaunted resolution,--of my sorrow on his account,--of my shame and indignation on my own. "My poor Gabriella!" "You are not angry with me, my mother?" "Angry! No, my child, it was a hard trial,--very hard for one so young. I did not think Mr. Regulus capable of so much unkindness. He has cancelled this day a debt of gratitude."