In the mean time, somewhat higher up, and within the enclosure, as if taking an evening walk, was a lady--a young and very beautiful lady, with some traces of mourning about her apparel, although its general hue was light. There was a certain harmony between her dress and her air and expression; for, though the dark hazel eyes and the rich, glossy brown hair, the warm, healthy cheek, and the arched lips of the small mouth, had altogether a cheerful look, yet there was a shade of melancholy thought in Maria Monkton's fair face as she walked through the scenes where every object that she saw, every step that she took, was full of memories of early days, and childhood's joys, and friends departed. They are always melancholy pleasures, those of memory, for they are the rays of a star that has set. With her eyes bent down, then, and a slow step, she walked on, took a little path to the left through the trees till it led her to the more open part of the park, and then stopped to gaze over the scene. The broad lands which she saw were all her own; the herds of deer were hers; that was her mansion, an angle of which peeped over the old oaks; but yet the sight and the knowledge were not altogether pleasurable, though it might seem that they ought to have been so. There was a feeling of loneliness in it all--of the heart's loneliness. It was quite a woman's sensation. She would rather have had all she saw another's, and herself too. Yet it was by no means that craving after marriage which some women feel, for she certainly had not been without many an opportunity of gratifying it had she been so inclined; but she wished that all she saw had been a father's still--a mother's--anybody's but her own, and that she had not been a solitary being on the earth, with so much wealth, such great responsibilities, and so little kindred sympathy. Her thoughts were of her father and her mother, of the companions and friends of her childhood, and of every one who had shared those happy hours which, like the flowers of spring, are far more beautiful than the fruits of summer; and in the scenes where she had known so much happiness, the very memory of those whom she had loved seemed dearer to her than the presence of any whom she still knew.