choose a region
wherein to spend my days, this should be it. It is the only spot I
have yet chanced upon, which, when viewed from the distance, with its
details filled up in the imagination, delightfully fulfils and
gratifies it to the utmost. What view can be more heavenly, than when
we look through and over the tops of the stag-headed oaks, along the
valley spread out beneath us, with the Thames winding and glistening
in the sun, and the noble castle of Windsor in the horizon, proudly
rearing itself into the sky?

Notwithstanding this scene, I had been rather earnestly observing a
distant but very lady-like figure walking across the grass, by the
side of some rails, and I felt somewhat disappointed, and
dissatisfied, when, at length, it vanished among the trees. I was now
resting myself at the foot of one, and deeply engrossed in the
desultory wanderings of a beetle on the ground, between my feet. I am
not conscious how long a time I might have been thus amusing myself,
when I was roused by an indistinct rustle close to me, and, on looking
up, I saw before me the lady-like figure. In the surprise of the
moment, I was possessed with a vague consciousness of some former
acquaintance, and in the first impulse, my hand nearly reached my hat,
but, in doubt, I withheld it.

She, too, seemed to be in the like predicament, bending slightly with
the neck, and I even fancied that her lips moved. The next moment, she
had passed on, and I became sensible of the presence of "my little
Frogmore girl!"

Could I have the presumption to renew, at this moment, such a brief
and casual interview, and so long ago, too? What was I to do! Had she
given me a slight token of recognition, or had she not?

At this moment, I am astonished at my determination. In a desperate
state of agitation, yet without a chance of wavering, I now rose, and
walked along the avenue to overtake her, as she was turning down
another to the right. On gaining the corner, I found her a few yards
in advance, seated on a bench with several other persons. I at once
kept directly down the first avenue without passing her.

Here, at last, then, had I once more met with Miss Curzon! Yet how was
she altered! She was now about sixteen, and considerably above the
common height of women, and her figure possessed an air of far greater
slenderness than when I first met her. Then, too, her hair, which was
mostly concealed, was light--now she wore a profusion of it, of a dar