emed to witness some bond between
them after all. And another comfort was, that now, in his misery,
she was able, if not to forget those painful thoughts about him
which had all these years haunted her, at least to dismiss them when
they came, in the hope that, as already such a change had passed
upon him, further and better change might follow.

She was still the same brown bird as of old--a bird of the twilight,
or rather a twilight itself, with a whole night of stars behind it,
of whose existence she scarcely knew, having but just started on the
voyage of discovery which life is. She had the sweetest, rarest
smile--not frequent and flashing like Gibbie's, but stealing up from
below, like the shadowy reflection of a greater light, gently
deepening, permeating her countenance until it reached her eyes,
thence issuing in soft flame. Always however, an soon as her eyes
began to glow duskily, down went their lids, and down dropt her head
like the frond of a sensitive plant, Her atmosphere was an embodied
stillness; she made a quiet wherever she entered; she was not
beautiful, but she was lovely; and her presence at once made a place
such as one would desire to be in.

The most pleasant of her thoughts were of necessity those with which
the two youths were associated. How dreary but for them and theirs
would the retrospect of her life have been! Several times every
winter they had met at the minister's, and every summer she had
again and again seen Gibbie with Mrs. Sclater, and once or twice had
had a walk with them, and every time Gibbie had something of Donal's
to give her. Twice Gibbie had gone to see her at the school, but
the second time she asked him not to come again, as Miss Kimble did
not like it. He gave a big stare of wonder, and thought of Angus
and the laird; but followed the stare with a swift smile, for he saw
she was troubled, and asked no question, but waited for the
understanding of all things that must come. But now, when or where
was she ever to see them more? Gibbie was no longer at the
minister's, and perhaps she would never be invited to meet them
there again. She dared not ask Donal to call: her father would be
indignant; and for her father's sake she would not ask Gibbie; it
might give him pain; while the thought that he would of a certainty
behave so differently to him now that he was well-dressed, and
mannered like a gentleman, was almost more unendurable to her than
the memory of h