Isadore and Mrs. Falkland, in the meantime, took the little path towards the brink of the river, in the immediate neighbourhood of which lay the spot where the boy had remarked the footsteps. Mrs. Falkland had lived too long in the great school of disappointment, human life, to suffer her expectations to be greatly excited; but Isadore, with a spirit naturally more enthusiastic, and as yet unchastened by any deep sorrows, felt her heart beat high, and her hopes struggle up against her fears, as she set out to take a more active part than she had hitherto been able to assume in the search for her cousin. The path wound along through the park, meandering considerably, perhaps in conformity to the taste of some ancient layer out of parks, or perhaps in consequence of the usual roundabout and circuitous nature of man's paths. Isadore, like all ardent minds, was tempted to make a more direct way for herself across the lawns; but Mrs. Falkland, in a more practical spirit, remembered that the grass was damp, and that it was not worth while to wet her feet for the purpose of saving half a minute. She adhered, therefore, to the gravel; and, as her more venturous daughter met with a little swamp occasioned by a spring, which obliged her to go round, they arrived at the spot they sought about the same time. The spot itself, however, needs some description, and, indeed, it has been already described once before, with a special injunction to the reader to remember all the points and bearings which were then detailed. However, lest memory should be treacherous, we will once more take a view of the scene, as it was presented to the eyes of Mrs. Falkland and her daughter, who were at that moment looking exactly west-north-west. Before them was a little shrubbery of evergreens and indigenous plants, kept as low as possible, so as just to hide the wall of the park, against which it rested, and yet not to cut off from the windows of the house a beautiful rocky bank, which rose on the other side of the wall to the height of a great number of feet. This bank formed one of the faces of a small wooded promontory, or rather peninsula, which was joined on to the hills by a narrow neck, over which the high-road passed after having skirted the other wall of the grounds. It was surrounded everywhere but at that point by the river. The summit was covered with rich wood; and down the sides also, in every place where the rock did not rise up abrupt and bare, a thousand various trees and shrubs had rooted themselves in the clefts and crevices, or towered up like pinnacles from the top of every detached fragment, and overhung the calm, still bend of the river, which served as a mirror to all the beauties round about it. The setting sun, with his lower limb just resting on the western hills, was pouring a flood of splendour down the valley of the stream; and his full light bursting upon the face of the rock to the left of Mrs. Falkland and