"Is he so kind?" returned Spencer, musingly. "Well, it may be so. And who would not be kind to you? Ah! it is a beautiful connexion that of brother and sister--I never had a sister!" "Have you then a brother?" asked Camilla, in some surprise, and turning her ingenuous eyes full on her companion. Spencer's colour rose--rose to his temples: his voice trembled as he answered, "No;--no brother!" then, speaking in a rapid and hurried tone, he continued, "My life has been a strange and lonely one. I am an orphan. I have mixed with few of my own age: my boyhood and youth have been spent in these scenes; my education such as Nature and books could bestow, with scarcely any guide or tutor save my guardian--the dear old man! Thus the world, the stir of cities, ambition, enterprise,--all seem to me as things belonging to a distant land to which I shall never wander. Yet I have had my dreams, Miss Beaufort; dreams of which these solitudes still form a part--but solitudes not unshared. And lately I have thought that those dreams might be prophetic. And you--do you love the world?" "I, like you, have scarcely tried it," said Camilla, with a sweet laugh. "but I love the country better,--oh! far better than what little I have seen of towns. But for you," she continued with a charming hesitation, "a man is so different from us,--for you to shrink from the world--you, so young and with talents too--nay, it is true!--it seems to me strange." "It may be so, but I cannot tell you what feelings of dread--what vague forebodings of terror seize me if I carry my thoughts beyond these retreats. Perhaps my good guardian--" "Your uncle?" interrupted Camilla. "Ay, my uncle--may have contributed to engender feelings, as you say, strange at my age; but still--" "Still what!" "My earlier childhood," continued Spencer, breathing hard and turning pale, "was not spent in the happy home I have now; it was passed in a premature ordeal of suffering and pain. Its recollections have left a dark shadow on my mind, and under that shadow lies every thought that points towards the troublous and labouring career of other men. But," he resumed after a pause, and in a deep, earnest, almost solemn voice,--" but after all, is this cowardice or wisdom? I find no monotony--no tedium in this quiet life. Is there not a certain morality--a certain religion in the spirit of a secluded and country existence? In it we do not know the evil passions which ambition and strife are said to arouse. I never feel jealous or envious of other men; I never know what it is to hate; my boat, my horse, our garden, music, books, and, if I may dare to say so, the solemn gladness that comes from the hopes of another life,-- these fill up every hour with thoughts and pursuits, peaceful, happy, and without a cloud, till of late, when--when--" "When what?" said Camilla, innocently. "When I have longed, but did not dare to ask another, if to share such a lot would content her!"