Katharine Norton was an orphan, and her parents had been of illustrious rank. She had travelled with a maiden aunt, and, as they were residing for a few weeks in the vicinity of Cambridge, she had met with young Dawson, and thus commenced an ardent attachment between them. And well might her appearance have inspired even a stoic with the most thrilling love. Smooth, and fair as light was her finely-formed brow,--changing its expression as a dark ringlet fell upon it,--or was thrown back. Her eyes seemed to be souls in themselves, endued with the faculty of thinking and feeling; their brilliancy their colour, and their form, were as if they had been given by the emotion which then ruled her mind. The features were stamped with a wild and noble beauty. Nor was her form inferior to her countenance: majestic, yet playful; like a vision with all the movements of music. She was now spending the summer in Manchester, where Dawson had introduced to her his sister, and they were seldom out of each other’s presence. They walked together, and James frequently joined them. The shadows of twilight were now mixing with the fading light of the western sky, and the hush of early eve was whispering silence in the vale where they were wandering. At length they reached the angle; on rounding which, at a short distance, was the Hermit’s Well, not famed for any medicinal properties, but for the pure water, which was said to have refreshed an old man (who, in olden times, haunted the adjacent hills,) every morning, as soon as he had left his hard couch to journey along with the sun. On a stone beside it, there sat a young female, dressed in the rustic simplicity of a foreign country. Her age seemed only that of a child. Yet there was a feverish rolling of the eye, a changing tremor of the lips, and a gentle throbbing of the breast, which speak the mystery of a hidden sorrow, or of a superior nature. Not a blush of colour tinged the pure pallor of her face--like a statue dedicated to thought, in the midst of fragrance and light. Her hands were playing with flowers, carelessly,--for her thoughts, it was evident, were on a less tranquil subject,--and although they were, at intervals, raised to her face, yet it assumed a still sadder expression. She was singing to herself in a low and melancholy strain, almost modulated to the still hush of the vale: and the notes seemed not so much to be proceeding from her voice, as her soul. Once or twice she started up, held her hands towards the west, and then placed them on her brow. Then she dipped them in the well, and with the pure water bathed her eyes. As soon, however, as young Dawson and his fair companions had approached within a few yards, her eyes quickly moved in the direction of the spot where they stood, and she became silent in her song.