"If I gave you cause to think that I did, I can only say, frankly and heartily, that I am very sorry for it." "Now I am emboldened to be absurd again, and speak more parables. I have found a locked-up treasure--a sealed fountain. I long to open it, but cannot." "Your figures are too deep for me. I can make nothing of them." "Then I will sink to plain prose. I have a friend whose heart is full of warm feeling and earnest thought; but, out of reserve, or Heaven knows what, she will express it to nobody but one or two intimate companions. She tantalizes the rest with a bantering word; and sometimes, when she is most in earnest, she seems to be most in jest. But why do you smile?" "Ask your friend Mr. Sharpe. He is your friend--is he not?" "I suppose so, though he is old enough to be my father. But why should I ask him?" "Because he once described to me a person very much like the one you have just described." "Who was the person?" "Mr. Sharpe said that, though he was in general quite frank and undisguised, yet, if he were particularly in earnest on any subject, he was apt to speak lightly of it, or perhaps ridicule it, to hide his real feeling." "Pray, who was this person? What was his name?" "Mr. Vassall Morton." "Did Sharpe say that of me? It is not a month since I was walking with him,--his evening constitutional,--and he said the very same thing of you. Now, as I hope to live an honest man, I was never half so much flattered in my life, as by being slandered in such company." Here he was interrupted abruptly, for, turning a corner, they came full upon the inn, or hotel, as its sign proclaimed it to be. Discontented male passengers were lounging about the bar room; disconsolate female passengers sat, in bonnets and shawls, in the parlor; and an unspeakable air of uneasiness and discomfort pervaded the whole place. "Our walk is over," sighed Morton; "I wish it had a more propitious ending. And now let me be your courier, or do your commands in any other capacity in which I can serve you." At eleven o'clock that night the train rolled into the station house at Boston, some four hours behind its time. "My father will certainly be here," said Miss Leslie; but her father was nowhere to be seen. Morton conducted her to a carriage. Her trunks and his own had already been placed upon it, when, by the lantern of one of the porters, Morton descried the agitated colonel threading the crowd in anxious search of his daughter. He had been waiting nervously since seven o'clock, and, when the train came in, had looked for her in every place but the right one. Morton hastened to relieve his fears. "What do you mean to do with yourself to-night?" Leslie asked, as the carriage drove towards his house. "Drive to my house in the country." "Your people will not expect you, and will be in bed before you can get there. You had much better come home with me." Morton was but too glad to accept the invitation.