h the same smile upon his unmoved countenance, he was
watching, not the display of nature in the distance, but that close at
his side. He was gazing with intense interest upon the young and ardent
worshipper of the beautiful and the true; and, in studying her features
and observing the play of her countenance, he seemed so wholly absorbed
that Gertrude--believing he was not listening to her words, but had
fallen into one of his absent moods--ceased speaking, rather abruptly,
and was turning away, when he said----

"Go on, happy child! Teach _me_, if you can, to see the world tinged
with the rosy colouring it wears for _you_; teach me to love and pity as
you do that miserable thing called _man_. I warn you that you have a
difficult task, but you seem to be very hopeful."

"Do you hate the world?" asked Gertrude, with straightforward
simplicity.

"Almost," was Mr. Phillips' answer.

"_I_ did _once_," said Gertrude, musingly.

"And will again, perhaps."

"No, that would be impossible; it has been a good foster mother to its
orphan child, and now I love it dearly."

"Have they been kind to you?" asked he, with eagerness. "Have heartless
strangers deserved the love you seem to feel for them?"

"Heartless strangers!" exclaimed Gertrude, the tears rushing to her
eyes. "Oh, sir, I wish you could have known my Uncle True, and Emily,
dear, blind Emily! you would think better of the world for their sakes."

"Tell me about them," said he, and he looked fixedly down into the
precipice which yawned at his feet.

"There is not much to tell, only that one was old and poor, and the
other wholly blind; and yet they made everything rich, and bright, and
beautiful to me--a poor, desolate, injured child."

"Injured! Then you acknowledge that you had previously met with wrong
and injustice?"

"I!" exclaimed Gertrude; "my earliest recollections are only of want,
suffering, and much unkindness."

"And these friends took pity on you?"

"Yes. One became an earthly father to me, and the other taught me where
to find a heavenly one."

"And ever since then you have been free and light as air, without a wish
or care in the world."

"No, indeed, I did not say so--I do not mean so," said Gertrude. "I have
had to part from Uncle True, and to give up other dear friends, some for
years and some forever; I have had many trials, many lonely, solitary
hours, and even now am oppressed by more than one subject of anxiety and
dread."

"H