On such themes he paused and thought as he went on, and the first effect produced upon his mind was of course painful and gloomy. As the sweetest music sounding at the same time with inharmonious notes can but produce harsh dissonance, so the brightest scenes to a mind filled with painful thoughts seems but to deepen their sadness. Still, however, after a time, the objects around him, and their bright tranquillity, had their effect upon the heart of the Count; his feelings grew calmer, and the magic power of association came to lay out a road whereby fancy might lead his thoughts to gentler themes. The path that he was pursuing led him at length to the spot where the little adventure had occurred which he had related in the course of the morning to his friend. He never passed by that spot without giving a thought to the fair girl he had there met; but now he dwelt upon the recollection longer than he otherwise might have done, in consequence of having spoken of her and of their meeting that very day. He smiled as he thought of the whole, for there was nothing like pain of any kind mingled with the remembrance. It was merely a fanciful dream he had cherished, half amused at himself for the little romance he had got up in his own mind, half employing the romance itself as a check upon the very imagination that had framed it. "She was certainly very lovely," he thought as he rode on, "and her voice was certainly very sweet; and unless nature, as is but too often the case, had in her instance become accomplice to a falsehood, that form, that face, that voice, must have betokened a bright spirit and a noble heart. Alas! why is it," he went on to ask himself, "why is it that the countenance, if we read it aright, should not be the correct interpreter of the heart? Doubtless such was at first God's will, and the serpent taught us, though we could not conceal our hearts from the Almighty, to falsify the stamp he had fixed upon them for our fellow men. And yet it is strange--however much we may have gained from experience, however painfully we may learn that man's heart is written in his actions, not in his face--it is strange we ever judge more or less by the same deceitful countenance, and guess by its expressions, if not by its features, though we might as well judge of what is at the bottom of a deep stream by the waves that agitate its surface." In such fanciful dreams he went on, often turning again to the fair vision that he had there seen, sometimes wondering who she could have been, and sometimes deciding and deciding the question wrongly in his own mind, but never suffering the wild expectation which he had once nourished of meeting her again to cross his mind--for he had found that to indulge it rendered him uneasy, and unfit for more real pursuits.