Chevillere and Lamar, both rising, exchanged the usual salutations, and the _good night! good night!_ went the rounds of all present. CHAPTER VII. "Were you not delighted with the wild and mountainous scenery of the country around the Virginia Springs?" said Victor Chevillere to Miss St. Clair, on the morning after the scene related in the last chapter, as the lady reclined, in a pensive mood, in the room before described. "Oh, sir, you forget that I was too feeble in mind and body to enjoy the scenery around me then, or to partake of the enthusiasm of my friends on the subject. The rich and romantic scenery of the White Sulphur was highly attractive to me, when I became somewhat convalescent; yet I shall carry with me through life a sad remembrance of scenes, which to many others of my age and sex will ever be associated with the gay dance, the enlivening gallopade, the stirring music, and with adventurous equestrian excursions among the mountains." "I believe," said Chevillere, "that the most melancholy reflections may be and are much softened and mellowed in after-life, by being associated in the mind with the profoundly poetical feelings excited by the constant view of quiet mountain scenery; such as the well-remembered, long, long line of blue peaks, stretching far away until they reach the clouds and the horizon." "It is indeed true," said she, "that kind and beautiful nature, in the season of green leaves and flowers, will sometimes almost tempt us to believe that misery is not the inevitable lot of the human family; but when the consciousness of the one and the beauty of the other are together present to us, it depends entirely upon the degree, whether the beauty softens the suffering or not." "In other words," said he, "whether the evil be so irremediable that _hope_ cannot enter the heart; that the ravishing beauty of nature cannot excite benevolence, devotion, and love." "That was not entirely my case," said she, "for I am grateful for having felt some pleasing excitement at the time, and for being able now to call up many pleasurable remembrances, clouded as they are for the most part with sadness." "If I have been rightly informed, you did not visit all the other springs around the White Sulphur." "My health would not permit of our making the entire fashionable round."