"She glided into a rather darkened recess of the room, near where I stood, and seated herself alone, as if to be out of the reach of observation; yet by some means I was seated by her side, almost as dumb as a statue. I even longed for more of Lamar's delineations, if for nothing else but to see her smile again, and light up those features which nature evidently made to smile. Her hair was still parted over the forehead in the Grecian manner; a single ringlet stole down behind her ear. Her dress was simplicity itself, exceedingly plain and tasteful. "I need not tell Miss St. Clair how much gratified I am at again meeting her in a circle composed almost entirely of my friends and my friends' friends; but, if I have been rightly informed, we are more indebted to accident than to any benevolent designs on her part for this meeting. "'A strange accident indeed, my being here. Not less so than your own. But _you_ are not a believer in accidents.' "How beautiful a little act sometimes appears, Randolph, when it sits upon the countenance of one so artless by nature that you can see all the machinery which she imagines is so completely hidden, as a child often hides its eyes and vainly supposes itself unseen. This _ruse_, intended to draw me into some argument about accidents, and to avoid the real case at issue, really amused me; I was willing, however, to follow her lead for a time. 'Accidents,' said I, 'seem to us, at first sight, to be without the usual train of cause and effect; but, if they were all placed in my hands, I think I could govern the destinies of the world, so long as I could control my own destiny.' "'I do not understand you, sir,' said she, with the simplest cunning imaginable; feigning deep interest, though her countenance would not join in the plot. "'The condition,' I continued, 'and the present circumstances of every individual now in this room might be traced back to some accident which has happened--to the person, his father, or his grandfather; the death of one friend, the marriage of another, may affect the destinies of the persons themselves and all connected with them.' "Ah, Randolph! there was a tender chord touched. Did you ever see a person shot through and through? The countenance expresses a whole age of misery in an instant. The soul is conscious of it before the body. One will even ask whether he is shot--while his countenance proclaims death more forcibly than a hundred tongues could utter it. There is a writhing, convulsive, retreating misery; part of which I saw I had inflicted upon this gentle being. This mystery must be solved. The system on which she is treated by those around her is false.