This preference I saw was observed, and not looked upon very favourably by the parents, who, I began to find out, had marked me for one of the elder girls. I saw plainly through their schemes, and heartlessly amused myself at their discomfiture while I paid my attentions to Maud. During the summer I was invited to stay at the country seat of this family, and it was here that our intimacy ripened. Here I observed the fine points of Maud's character, in spite of all her reserve. Without being regularly in love with each other, a sympathy had grown up between us which by others, I have no doubt, was regarded as love. We appreciated each other's talents, and esteemed each other's characters. The family had repeatedly seen me act, and Maud, more than any of them, seemed to appreciate my acting, while I was equally charmed at her skill on the piano and on the harp, and with her singing. "I do not know how it is, Mr. Blackdeed," she said to me one day when we were left alone together in the garden, "but you are the only person I know who treats me with respect, or, indeed, like a rational being." "Indeed," said I, feigning not to have observed the way in which she was treated by her family. "How so?" "Oh! you know very well how I am treated at home. I have seen the surprise on your face whenever my sisters snubbed me, and saw that you felt how unfair it was. You will not pretend that you never observed it." "Well, Miss Maud," I replied, "your penetration is such that I cannot do other than confess that _I have_ observed it, and that I was very much surprised at it. I have often wondered what the reason could be." She answered with a slight sigh. "No one seems to understand me. From childhood I was ever different from the rest. I seem to live two distinct beings--one with my family, and before the world, and another in my own thoughts. "You will have observed my silence when in company. I am aware to what it is generally attributed; but the fact is, that I have so little in common with my sisters I feel that if I were to give utterance to my ideas I should not be understood, but be considered more mad than they think me at present; hence my silence. I never knew anyone but you who thought even in the slightest degree like myself, and therefore to you I feel less inclined to be reserved than to others; in fact, with you I feel it impossible to be reserved at all. "It is as if you had some power over me to draw out my ideas--to draw me out of myself. All my life I have longed to know someone; to have some friend who was unlike the rest of the world, and more like myself, who could understand me, and to whom I could pour out my thoughts, and feel that they were not poured out upon a desert soil."