d won largely, may surely quit the table when he
pleases."

"It is true," said he, after a pause,--"it is true, I have had luck with
me. The very trees under whose branches we are walking, could they but
speak, might bear witness to a time when I strolled here as poor and as
hopeless as the meanest outcast that walks the high-road. I had not one
living soul to say, 'Be of good cheer, your time will come yet.' My
case had even more than the ordinary obstacles to success; for fate had
placed me where every day, every hour of my life, should show me the
disparity between myself and those high-born great to whose station I
aspired. If you only knew, Lady Augusta," added he, in a tone tremulous
with emotion, "what store I laid on any passing kindness,--the simplest
word, the merest look,--how even a gesture or a glance lighted hope
within my heart, or made it cold and dreary within me, you 'd wonder
that a creature such as this could nerve itself to the stern work of
life."

"I was but a child at the time you speak of," said she, looking down
bashfully; "but I remember you perfectly."

"Indeed!" said he, with an accent that implied pleasure.

"So well," continued she, "that there is not a spot in the wood where we
used to take our lesson-books in summer, but lives still associated in
my mind with those hours, so happy they were!"

"I always feared that I had left very different memories behind me
here," said he, in a low voice.

"You were unjust, then," said she, in a tone still lower,--"unjust to
yourself and to us."

They walked on without speaking, a strange mysterious consciousness that
each was in the other's thoughts standing in place of converse between
them. At length, stopping suddenly in front of a little rocky cavern,
over which aquatic plants were drooped, she said, "Do you remember
calling that 'Calypso's grotto'? It bears no other name still."

"I remember more," said he; and then stopped in some confusion.

"Some girlish folly of mine, perhaps," broke she in hurriedly; "but
once for all, let me ask forgiveness for many a thoughtless word, many
a childish wrong. You, who know all tempers and moods of men as few
know them, can well make allowances for natures spoiled as ours
were,--pampered and flattered by those about us, living in a little
world of our own here. And yet, do not think me silly when I own that
I would it were all back again. The childish wrong. You, who know all
tempers and moods of m