felt that
visionary happiness which serenity of mind, united to the warm
imagination of early life, alone can bestow.

It was a fairy existence to live thus secluded in that lonely valley,
where the flowers seemed to blossom for them alone; for them, the summer
birds sang their roundelays, and the fair moon shed her pale light over
hill and stream, with none to mark her splendour save themselves,
Not these thoughts alone filled her mind. Already had she noticed
the artless habits of the humble peasantry--their gratitude for the
slightest services, their affectionate greetings, the touching beauty of
their expressions, teeming with an imagery she never heard before.
All appealed to her mind with a very different force from what they
addressed themselves with to her father's. Already she felt attracted by
the figurative eloquence, so popular a gift among the people. The
warm fervour of fancy she had believed the attribute of highly-wrought
temperaments only, she found here amid poverty and privation; flashes of
bright wit broke from the gloom of daily suffering; and the fire
which gives life its energy, burned brightly amid the ashes of many
an extinguished hope. These were features she was not prepared to meet
among a peasantry living in a wild unvisited district, and day by day
they fascinated her more strongly.

It was not entirely to the difference between father and daughter that
these varied impressions were owing. The people themselves assumed a
tone quite distinctive to each. Sir Marmaduke they had always heard
spoken of, as a stern-tempered man, whose severity towards his tenantry
was, happily, tempered by the personal kindness of the agent. Captain
Hemsworth constantly impressed them with the notion that all harsh
measures originated with his principal--the favours came from himself
only, the exactions of high rents, the rigorous prosecution of the law,
he ever asserted were acts compulsory with him, but always repugnant to
his own better feelings. Every little act of grace he accompanied by an
assurance, that he "hoped Sir Marmaduke might not hear of it," as the
consequences to himself might prove ruinous. In fact, he contrived to
mislead both parties in their estimate of each other, and their first
acquaintanceship, it could not be supposed, should dispel the illusion.
The peasantry, however, were the first to discover the error: long
before Sir Marmaduke had made any progress in deciphering the mystic
symb