rock, against which
Gertrude was leaning. His attitude was easy and careless, his
broad-brimmed straw hat lay on the ground, and his snow-besprinkled hair
was tossed back from his high and expanded forehead. He immediately
joined Dr. Jeremy and Gertrude.

"You have got the start of us, sir," said the former.

"Yes; I have walked from the village--my practice always when the roads
are such that no time can be gained by riding."

As he spoke, he placed in Gertrude's hand, without looking at her, or
seeming conscious what he was doing, a bouquet of rich laurel blossoms.
She would have thanked him, but his absent manner was such that it
afforded her no opportunity, especially as he went on talking with the
doctor, as if she had not been present.

All three resumed their walk. Mr. Phillips and Dr. Jeremy conversed in
an animated manner, and Gertrude, content to be a listener, soon
perceived that she was not the only person to whom the stranger had
power to render himself agreeable. Dr. Jeremy engaged him upon a variety
of subjects, upon all of which he appeared equally well informed; and
Gertrude smiled to see her old friend rub his hands together--his mode
of expressing satisfaction.

Gertrude thought their new acquaintance must be a botanist by
profession, so versed was he in everything relating to that science.
Again, she was sure that geology must have been with him an absorbed
study, so intimate seemed his acquaintance with mother earth; and both
of these impressions were in turn dispelled when he talked of the ocean
like a sailor, of the counting-house like a merchant, of Paris like a
man of fashion and the world. In the meantime she walked beside him,
silent but not unnoticed; for, as they approached a rough and steep
ascent, he offered his arm, and expressed a fear lest she should become
fatigued. Dr. Jeremy declared his belief that Gerty could outwalk them
both; and, thus satisfied, Mr. Phillips resumed the broken thread of
their discourse, into which Gertrude was drawn almost unawares.

Mr. Phillips no longer seemed in Gertrude's eyes a stranger--he was a
mystery, but not a forbidding one. She longed to learn the history of a
life which many an incident of his own narrating proved to have been
made up of strange and mingled experience; especially did her
sympathetic nature desire to fathom the cause of that deep-seated
melancholy which shadowed and darkened his noble countenance, and made
his very smile a s