ur mind made up?'

'If you mean that I thought myself uncalled for, and heartily detested
the expedition, you are right; but I saw what I did not expect.'

'Was it very bad?'

'A very idle practical joke, such as I dislike particularly. A
quantity of wet sea-weed wound round Mr. Dynevor's hat.'

Miss King laughed. 'Really, my dear, I don't think you know what young
men like from each other.'

'Mr. Dynevor did not like it,' said Isabel, 'though he tried to pass it
off lightly as the spirits of recovery. Those spirits--I am afraid he
has too much to suffer from them. There is something so ungenerous in
practical wit, especially from a prosperous man to one unprosperous!'

'Well, Isabel, I won't contradict, but I should imagine that such
things often showed people to be on the best of terms.'

Isabel shook her head, and left the room, to have her dark hair
braided, with little heed from herself, as she sat dreamily over a
book. Before the last bracelet was clasped, she was claimed by her two
little sisters, who gave her no peace till her desk was opened, and a
manuscript drawn forth, that they might hear the two new pages of her
morning's work. It was a Fouque-like tale, relieving and giving
expression to the yearnings for holiness and loftiness that had grown
up within Isabel Conway in the cramped round of her existence. The
story went back to the troubadour days of Provence, where a knight, the
heir of a line of shattered fortunes, was betrothed to the heiress of
the oppressors, that thus all wrongs might be redressed. They had
learnt to love, when Sir Roland discovered that the lands in dispute
had been won by sacrilege. He met Adeline at a chapel in a little
valley, to tell the whole. They agreed to sacrifice themselves, that
restitution should be made; the knight to go as a crusader to the Holy
Land; the lady, after waiting awhile to tend her aged father, to enter
a convent, and restore her dower to the church. Twice had Isabel
written that parting, pouring out her heart in the high-souled tender
devotion of Roland and his Adeline; and both feeling and description
were beautiful and poetical, though unequal. Louisa used to cry
whenever she heard it, yet only wished to hear it again and again, and
when Virginia insisted on reading it to Miss King, tears had actually
been surprised in the governess's eyes. Yet she liked still better
Adeline's meek and patient temper, where breathed the feeling Isabe