he highest degree to excite a communion of
soul. Hilda was clever and well-read, with a deep love for the
beautiful, and a familiar acquaintance with all modern literature.
There was not a beautiful spot on the road which had been sung by
poets or celebrated in fiction of which she was ignorant. Ferney,
sacred to Voltaire; Geneva, the birth-place of Rousseau; the Jura
Alps, sung by Byron; the thousand places of lesser note embalmed by
French or German writers in song and story, were all greeted by her
with a delight that was girlish in its enthusiastic
demonstrativeness. Lord Chetwynde, himself intellectual, recognized
and respected the brilliant intellect of his companion. He saw that
the woman who had saved his life at the risk of her own, who had
dropped down senseless at his bedside, overworn with duties
self-imposed through love for him--the woman who had overwhelmed him
with obligations of gratitude--could also dazzle him with her
intellectual brilliancy, and surpass him in familiarity with the
greatest geniuses of modern times.

Another circumstance had contributed toward the formation of a closer
association between these two. Hilda had no maid with her, but was
traveling unattended. On leaving Lausanne she found that Gretchen was
unwilling to go to Italy, and had, therefore, parted with her with
many kind words, and the bestowal of presents sufficiently valuable
to make the kind-hearted German maid keep in her memory for many
years to come the recollection of that gentle suffering English lady,
whose devotion to her husband had been shown so signally, and almost
at the cost of her own life. Hilda took no maid with her. Either she
could not obtain one in so small a place as Lausanne, or else she did
not choose to employ one. Whatever the cause may have been, the
result was to throw her more upon the care of Lord Chetwynde, who was
forced, if not from gratitude at least from common politeness, to
show her many of those little attentions which are demanded by a lady
from a gentleman. Traveling together as they did, those attentions
were required more frequently than under ordinary circumstances; and
although they seemed to Lord Chetwynde the most ordinary
commonplaces, yet to Hilda every separate act of attention or of
common politeness carried with it a joy which was felt through all
her being. If she had reasoned about that joy, she might perhaps have
seen how unfounded it was. But she did not reason about it;