s I ever heard--when the omnibus stopped to give
admission to two ladies. The first who got in was an elderly
person--pale and depressed--evidently in delicate health. The second was
a young girl.

Among the workings of the hidden life within us which we may experience
but cannot explain, are there any more remarkable than those mysterious
moral influences constantly exercised, either for attraction or
repulsion, by one human being over another? In the simplest, as in the
most important affairs of life, how startling, how irresistible is their
power! How often we feel and know, either pleasurably or painfully, that
another is looking on us, before we have ascertained the fact with our
own eyes! How often we prophesy truly to ourselves the approach of a
friend or enemy, just before either have really appeared! How strangely
and abruptly we become convinced, at a first introduction, that we shall
secretly love this person and loathe that, before experience has guided
us with a single fact in relation to their characters!

I have said that the two additional passengers who entered the vehicle
in which I was riding, were, one of them, an elderly lady; the other, a
young girl. As soon as the latter had seated herself nearly opposite
to me, by her companion's side, I felt her influence on me directly--an
influence that I cannot describe--an influence which I had never
experienced in my life before, which I shall never experience again.

I had helped to hand her in, as she passed me; merely touching her arm
for a moment. But how the sense of that touch was prolonged! I felt it
thrilling through me--thrilling in every nerve, in every pulsation of my
fast-throbbing heart.

Had I the same influence over her? Or was it I that received, and she
that conferred, only? I was yet destined to discover; but not then--not
for a long, long time.

Her veil was down when I first saw her. Her features and her expression
were but indistinctly visible to me. I could just vaguely perceive that
she was young and beautiful; but, beyond this, though I might imagine
much, I could see little.

From the time when she entered the omnibus, I have no recollection of
anything more that occurred in it. I neither remember what passengers
got out, or what passengers got in. My powers of observation, hitherto
active enough, had now wholly deserted me. Strange! that the capricious
rule of chance should sway the action of our faculties that a trifle