ardly be discovered unless one already knew them.

The writing was a woman's, but it had surely taken its character from
certain features of her own: it was clear, firm, individual. It
had nothing of that air of general debility which usually marks the
manuscript of young ladies, yet its firmness was far removed from the
stiff, conventional slope which all Englishwomen seem to acquire in
youth and retain through life, I don't see how any man in my situation
could have helped reading a few lines--if only for the sake of restoring
lost property. But I was drawn on and on, and finished by reading all:
thence, since no further harm could be done, I reread, pondering over
certain passages until they stayed with me. Here they are, as I set them
down, that evening, on the back of a legal blank:

"It makes a great deal of difference whether we wear social
forms as bracelets or handcuffs."

"Can we not still be wholly our independent selves, even
while doing, in the main, as others do? I know two who are
so; but they are married."

"The men who admire these bold, dashing young girls treat
them like weaker copies of themselves. And yet they boast of
what they call 'experience'!"

"I wonder if any one felt the exquisite beauty of the noon
as I did to-day? A faint appreciation of sunsets and storms
is taught us in youth, and kept alive by novels and
flirtations; but the broad, imperial splendor of this
summer noon!--and myself standing alone in it--yes, utterly
alone!" "The men I seek _must_ exist: where are they? How
make an acquaintance, when one obsequiously bows himself
away, as I advance? The fault is surely not all on my side."

There was much more, intimate enough to inspire me with a keen interest
in the writer, yet not sufficiently so to make my perusal a painful
indiscretion. I yielded to the impulse of the moment, took out my
pencil, and wrote a dozen lines on one of the blank pages. They ran
something in this wise:

"IGNOTUS IGNOTAE!--You have bestowed without intending it,
and I have taken without your knowledge. Do not regret the
accident which has enriched another. This concealed idyl of
the hills was mine, as I supposed, but I acknowledge your
equal right to it. Shall we share the possession, or will
you banish me?"

There was a frank advance, tempered by a proper caution, I fancied, in
the words