s, and other perilous chances of the
postilion's life.

I am not sure if my own courage would have carried me so close to Elspat
had he not followed. There was in her countenance the stern abstraction
of hopeless and overpowering sorrow, mixed with the contending feelings
of remorse, and of the pride which struggled to conceal it. She guessed,
perhaps, that it was curiosity, arising out of her uncommon story, which
induced me to intrude on her solitude; and she could not be pleased that
a fate like hers had been the theme of a traveller's amusement. Yet
the look with which she regarded me was one of scorn instead of
embarrassment. The opinion of the world and all its children could not
add or take an iota from her load of misery; and, save from the half
smile that seemed to intimate the contempt of a being rapt by the very
intensity of her affliction above the sphere of ordinary humanities, she
seemed as indifferent to my gaze, as if she had been a dead corpse or a
marble statue.

Elspat was above the middle stature. Her hair, now grizzled, was still
profuse, and it had been of the most decided black. So were her eyes,
in which, contradicting the stern and rigid features of her countenance,
there shone the wild and troubled light that indicates an unsettled
mind. Her hair was wrapt round a silver bodkin with some attention to
neatness, and her dark mantle was disposed around her with a degree of
taste, though the materials were of the most ordinary sort.

After gazing on this victim of guilt and calamity till I was ashamed to
remain silent, though uncertain how I ought to address her, I began
to express my surprise at her choosing such a desert and deplorable
dwelling. She cut short these expressions of sympathy, by answering in
a stern voice, without the least change of countenance or posture,
"Daughter of the stranger, he has told you my story." I was silenced
at once, and felt how little all earthly accommodation must seem to
the mind which had such subjects as hers for rumination. Without again
attempting to open the conversation, I took a piece of gold from my
purse, (for Donald had intimated she lived on alms), expecting she would
at least stretch her hand to receive it. But she neither accepted nor
rejected the gift; she did not even seem to notice it, though twenty
times as valuable, probably, as was usually offered. I was obliged to
place it on her knee, saying involuntarily, as I did so, "May God pardon
you