h resumed, "that beings so uncouth
should be influenced by the same attachments as those which unite the
educated and the refined."

"It is wonderful, as you say," returned the other like one awakening from
a dream. "I would give a thousand of the brightest guineas that ever came
from the mint of George II. to know the private history of that youth."

"Is he then a stranger to you?" demanded Gertrude with the quickness of
thought.

The Rover turned an eye on her, that was vacant for the moment, but into
which consciousness and expression began to steal as he gazed, until the
foot of the governess was visibly trembling with the nervous excitement
that pervaded her entire frame.

"Who shall pretend to know the heart of man!" he answered, again inclining
his head as it might be in acknowledgment of her perfect right to far
deeper homage. "All are strangers, till we can read their most secret
thoughts."

"To pry into the mysteries of the human mind, is a privilege which few
possess," coldly remarked the governess. "The world must be often tried,
and thoroughly known, before we may pretend to judge of the motives of any
around us."

"And yet it is a pleasant world to those who have the heart to make it
merry," cried the Rover, with one of those startling transitions which
marked his manner. "To him who is stout enough to follow the bent of his
humour, all is easy. Do you know, that the true secret of the philosopher
is not in living for ever, but in living while you may. He who dies at
fifty, after a fill of pleasure, has had more of life than he who drags
his feet through a century, bearing the burden of the world's caprices,
and afraid to speak above his breath, lest, forsooth, his neighbour should
find that his words were evil."

"And yet are there some who find their pleasure in pursuing the practices
of virtue."

"'Tis lovely in your sex to say it," he answered with an air that the
sensitive governess fancied was gleaming with the growing licentiousness
of a free booter. She would now gladly have, dismissed her visiter; but a
certain flashing of the eye, and a manner that was becoming gay by a
species of unnatural effort, admonished her of the danger of offending one
who acknowledged no law but his own will. Assuming a tone and a manner
that were kind, while they upheld the dignity of her sex, and pointing to
sundry instruments of music that formed part of the heterogeneous
furniture of the cabin, she adroitly