Soon, however, she became more interested by a strange tale she brought home of a solitary boy. He was English--handsome and well-born--but savage, and secluded to a degree that admitted of no attention being paid him. She heard him spoken of at first at the house of some foreigners. They entered on a dissertation on the peculiar melancholy of the English, that could develop itself in a lad scarcely sixteen. He was a misanthrope. He was seen rambling the country either on foot, or on a pony--but he would accept no invitations--shunned the very aspect of his fellows--never appearing, by any chance, in the frequented walks about the baths. Was he deaf and dumb? Some replied in the affirmative, and yet this opinion gained no general belief. Elizabeth once saw him at a little distance, seated under a wide-spreading tree in a little dell--to her he seemed more handsome than anything she had ever seen, and more sad. One day she was in company with a gentleman, who, she was told, was his father; a man somewhat advanced in years--of a stern, saturnine aspect--whose smile was a sneer, and who spoke of his only child, calling him that "unhappy boy," in a tone that bespoke rather contempt than commiseration. It soon became rumoured that he was somewhat alienated in mind through the ill treatment of his parent--and Elizabeth could almost believe this--she was so struck by the unfeeling and disagreeable appearance of the stranger. All this she related to Falkner with peculiar earnestness--"If you could only see him," she said, "if we could only get him here--we would cure his misery, and his wicked father should no longer torment him. If he is deranged, he is harmless, and I am sure he would love us. It is too sad to see one so gentle and so beautiful pining away without any to love him." Falkner smiled at the desire to cure every evil that crossed her path, which is one of the sweetest illusions of youth, and asked, "Has he no mother?" "No," replied Elizabeth, "he is an orphan like me, and his father is worse than dead, as he is so inhuman. Oh! how I wish you would save him as you saved me." "That, I am afraid, would be out of my power," said Falkner; "yet, if you can make any acquaintance with him, and can bring him here, perhaps we may discover some method of serving him."