And you, young wondering heart, look out upon him, innocent, ignorant, wistful, like an angel on the threshold of the world--nothing knowing the wiles and snares, the tortures and deliriums that live yonder under the battle-cloud, unacquainted with those prodigious penalties of social life, which yonder are paid and borne every hour; but looking out with your head bent forward, and your innocent eyes piercing far in the dreamy vision of reverie, making wistful investigation into the new marvels round you, pondering and bewildered in your own secret soul. Randall--looking out thus through the morning light upon the city, one can see him in so many aspects;--the light shines upon his lofty head, reaching almost to the skies, like the hill of his quiet home--and Menie lifts her eyes to follow that noble daring look of his, piercing up through mortal clouds and vapours to do homage with the gifts God has given him, at his Master’s throne and footstool. But anon there steals a cloud round the hero of Menie’s vision--a dim background, which still reveals him, not less clearly, nor with less fascination, but with a sadder wonder of interest--for Randall’s eyes are bent earthward, Randall’s lofty head is bowed, and Menie, though she watches him with yearning curiosity, can never meet his downcast look to read what is there--can never fathom what lies within the veiled heart and self-abstracted soul. You would think now that her eyes are caught by the sunshine yonder, making each mischievous confusion among the city vapours: Not so; for Menie’s eyes, under that troubled curve of her forehead, are studying Randall, and see only an incomprehensible something in him, overshadowing all the earth and all the skies. With her little basket in her hand, with her dainty step, and fluttering muslin gown, Miss Annie brushes the dew from the grass, as she draws near the elm trees. But though Miss Annie has been very confidential with her grand-niece on the subject of her own juvenile occupations, one little piece of daily business Miss Annie has forborne to tell of, and that is a morning visit she pays to a poor pensioner or two in the village, where, if perhaps her charity may be sometimes intrusive, it is always real. For poor Miss Annie’s heart, though it figures so much in her common talk, and is overlaid with so many false sentimentalities, has a true little fountain of human kindness in it, spite of the fantastic pretences that hide it from common view. Absorbed with her new thoughts, Menie neither heard nor saw her aunt’s approach, till she woke with a start to hear a gay laugh behind her, and to feel the pressure of those long thin fingers upon her eyelids. “Dreaming, Menie? ah, my pretty love! but not ‘in maiden meditation fancy free.’”