ize me if I carry my thoughts beyond these
retreats. Perhaps my good guardian--"

"Your uncle?" interrupted Camilla.

"Ay, my uncle--may have contributed to engender feelings, as you say,
strange at my age; but still--"

"Still what!"

"My earlier childhood," continued Spencer, breathing hard and turning
pale, "was not spent in the happy home I have now; it was passed in a
premature ordeal of suffering and pain. Its recollections have left a
dark shadow on my mind, and under that shadow lies every thought that
points towards the troublous and labouring career of other men. But,"
he resumed after a pause, and in a deep, earnest, almost solemn
voice,--"but after all, is this cowardice or wisdom? I find no
monotony--no tedium in this quiet life. Is there not a certain
morality--a certain religion in the spirit of a secluded and country
existence? In it we do not know the evil passions which ambition and
strife are said to arouse. I never feel jealous or envious of other men;
I never know what it is to hate; my boat, my horse, our garden, music,
books, and, if I may dare to say so, the solemn gladness that comes from
the hopes of another life,--these fill up every hour with thoughts
and pursuits, peaceful, happy, and without a cloud, till of late,
when--when--"

"When what?" said Camilla, innocently.

"When I have longed, but did not dare to ask another, if to share such a
lot would content her!"

He bent, as he spoke, his soft blue eyes full upon the blushing face of
her whom he addressed, and Camilla half smiled and half sighed:

"Our companions are far before us," said she, turning away her face,
"and see, the road is now smooth." She quickened her horse's pace as
she said this; and Spencer, too new to women to interpret favourably
her evasion of his words and looks, fell into a profound silence which
lasted during the rest of their excursion.

As towards the decline of day he bent his solitary way home, emotions
and passions to which his life had hitherto been a stranger, and which,
alas! he had vainly imagined a life so tranquil would everlastingly
restrain, swelled his heart.

"She does not love me," he muttered, half aloud; "she will leave me, and
what then will all the beauty of the landscape seem in my eyes? And how
dare I look up to her? Even if her cold, vain mother--her father, the
man, they say, of forms and scruples, were to consent, would they not
question closely of my true birth and origin? And