"I saw you on the day before yesterday," replied the gipsy, "though it was but for a moment, and you did not see me. But it is not alone from that I know you. You are very like your father, as I remember him; but still more like your grandfather and your uncle, in the times when I can recall as happy a set of faces in Dimden Hall as ever shone in the palace or the cottage." The gipsy sighed as he spoke, and De Vaux sighed too, for he had never seen such faces in his father's house; and there was also, in the picture thus presented, a sad sample of how happy things and scenes of joy can, in a few short years, pass away and be forgotten, which, linking itself by the chain of association to the present, carried on his mind to the time when he and his might be as those of whom the gipsy spoke, and all the happiness which he now so fondly anticipated with her he loved become a memory for some old remaining servant, or poor dependant, to sigh over in their age. "Then I am to suppose," rejoined De Vaux, after pausing for a moment on thoughts which, perhaps, might be called gloomy--"then I am to suppose that I am speaking with the person signing himself Pharold; and I may also conclude," he added, "that he is the same whom I have heard of, as having been taken, when a boy, by my grandfather, in order to educate him with my father and uncle; but who could not bear the restraints of that kind of life, and at the end of two years fled back to his own race and his native pursuits." "In less time, in less time than that," said the gipsy; "but I often went back, and was ever kindly met, and used to please myself by enacting one day the young gentleman at the hall, and the next the gipsy on the common. But after a time," he continued, carried away by his subject, "I strayed farther, and forgot what I might have been, to give myself more up to what I was to be--but there is no use of talking of such things now, it makes me sad! And so you have heard all that. Yet who would tell you? Your father never did, I am sure; and your aunt was then but a child of two or three years old; and your uncle--but you remember not him." "No," replied De Vaux, "any knowledge of the facts that I do possess was derived, I believe, from the tales of an excellent old housekeeper, who died not many years ago, and who seemed to speak of Pharold with no small regard." "And is she dead?" cried Pharold. "Poor good old Mrs. Dickinson--I knew not that she was dead--she was ever kind to me, good soul: and now she is dust and ashes! Well, well, the fairest, and the strongest, and the best, go down to the sand with the leaves of the tree!--but will the kindly affections, and the noble feelings, and the generous nature, die too and rot? Can you tell me that, young gentleman?--I think not." "Nor I either," answered De Vaux. "God forbid that we should think so! But, as I said, it was from that good old person, as I now recollect, that I heard all I know of your former history."