A year passed, and the baron came not. Louise was now growing up towards womanhood; the warm blush mantled more deeply on her cheek; her eye gained a brighter lustre; her lip acquired a warmer red; her mind, too, expanded every hour, as if to keep pace with that fair form, which was each day acquiring additional beauty. As she wandered along beside me, her conversation was more imaginative, more full of deep thought; and we talked over a thousand things in which fancy and feeling linked our thoughts together, so as to remain inseparable for ever. There was thus formed for me a store of ideas, in regard to which I have since felt--alas! how painfully--that they could never be mentioned, that they could never be alluded to in the slightest manner, without calling up in my bosom the thought of her, of her words, of her looks, of scenes long past, and of departed happiness. Nor, indeed, could it be otherwise with her. We created, in fact, for ourselves, a world of magic aspirations; a straight and even pathway, on which fancy, guided by memory, ran back like lightning from the present to the past. We talked of her mother and of the days gone by, and we recalled all her sweetness, and her beauty, and her tenderness towards us both; and more than once we mingled our tears together, when we recollected all that she had done to win and merit love, and that the eternal barrier had fallen between us and her, shutting us out from all communication with the loved and the departed. We talked of the future and of the world--the wide, unknown world open before us both. She spoke of it herself with awe and shuddering, as if she foresaw and would have shrunk from the griefs, and cares, and anxieties before her. Often, also, we would have recourse to dreams to chase away apprehensions; she would inquire of me what the great capital was like; and when she found I could in no degree satisfy her, she would apply to fancy, and build up an enchanted city from the gay things of her own imagination. The bright and glorious universe, too, afforded to both of us a thousand schemes for speculation; other lands would rise up before the mind's eye, clothed with brightness not their own; and when I spoke of Italy or Spain, the vast and beautiful creations of art, a climate of sunshine, a soil of fertility, and a courteous and friendly people, such as I had read in the vague or overcharged accounts of travellers, her countenance would glow brightly, her young eye sparkle, and she would wish to be a journeyer through such scenes with people who could love them or admire them like herself.