An hour after they were on the road to London; and, full of engrossing and torturing thoughts as Falkner was, still he was called out of himself, and forced to admire the winning ways, the enchanting innocence and loveliness of his little charge. We human beings are so unlike one to the other, that it is often difficult to make one person understand that there is any force in an impulse which is omnipotent with another. Children, to some, are mere animals, unendued with instinct, troublesome, and unsightly--with others they possess a charm that reaches to the heart's core, and stirs the purest and most generous portions of our nature. Falkner had always loved children. In the Indian wilds, which for many years he had inhabited, the sight of a young native mother with her babe had moved him to envious tears. The fair, fragile offspring of European women, with blooming faces and golden hair, had often attracted him to bestow kind offices on parents whom otherwise he would have disregarded; the fiery passions of his own heart caused him to feel a soothing repose while watching the innocent gambols of childhood, while his natural energy, which scarcely ever found sufficient scope for exercise, led him to delight in protecting the distressed. If the mere chance spectacle of infant helplessness was wont to excite his sympathy, this sentiment, by the natural workings of the human heart, became far more lively when so beautiful and perfect a creature as Elizabeth Raby was thrown upon his protection. No one could have regarded her unmoved; her silver-toned laugh went to the heart; her alternately serious or gay looks, each emanating from the spirit of love; her caresses, her little words of endearment; the soft pressure of her tiny hand and warm rosy lips--were all as charming as beauty and the absence of guile could make them. And he, the miserable man, was charmed, and pitied the mother who had been forced to desert so sweet a flower--leaving to the bleak elements a blossom which it had been paradise for her to have cherished and sheltered in her own bosom for ever.