agined human life to be steeped in such places as that. This figure
was to the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood what a fact is to a fairy-tale,
an interpretation to a myth. We, on our side, were to our hostess
subjects of a curiosity not cunningly veiled.

"I should like so to go abroad!" she exclaimed suddenly, as if she meant
us to take the speech for an expression of interest in ourselves.

"Have you never been?" one of us asked.

"Only once. Three years ago my brother took me to Switzerland. We
thought it extremely beautiful. Except for that journey I've always
lived here. I was born in this house. It's a dear old place indeed, and
I know it well. Sometimes one wants a change." And on my asking her
how she spent her time and what society she saw, "Of course it's very
quiet," she went on, proceeding by short steps and simple statements, in
the manner of a person called upon for the first time to analyse to that
extent her situation. "We see very few people. I don't think there are
many nice ones hereabouts. At least we don't know them. Our own family's
very small. My brother cares for nothing but riding and books. He had
a great sorrow ten years ago. He lost his wife and his only son, a dear
little boy, who of course would have had everything. Do you know that
that makes me the heir, as they've done something--I don't quite
know what--to the entail? Poor old me! Since his loss my brother has
preferred to be quite alone. I'm sorry he's away. But you must wait till
he comes back. I expect him in a day or two." She talked more and more,
as if our very strangeness led her on, about her circumstances, her
solitude, her bad eyes, so that she couldn't read, her flowers, her
ferns, her dogs, and the vicar, recently presented to the living by
her brother and warranted quite safe, who had lately begun to light his
altar candles; pausing every now and then to gasp in self-surprise, yet,
in the quaintest way in the world, keeping up her story as if it were
a slow rather awkward old-time dance, a difficult pas seul in which
she would have been better with more practice, but of which she must
complete the figure. Of all the old things I had seen in England this
exhibited mind of Miss Searle's seemed to me the oldest, the most handed
down and taken for granted; fenced and protected as it was by convention
and precedent and usage, thoroughly acquainted with its subordinate
place. I felt as if I were talking with the heroine of a last-ce