such a being as Fanshawe; for he was distinguished by many of those
asperities around which a woman's affection will often cling. But she was
formed to walk in the calm and quiet paths of life, and to pluck the
flowers of happiness from the wayside where they grow. Singularity of
character, therefore, was not calculated to win her love. She undoubtedly
felt an interest in the solitary student, and perceiving, with no great
exercise of vanity, that her society drew him from the destructive
intensity of his studies, she perhaps felt it a duty to exert her
influence. But it did not occur to her that her influence had been
sufficiently strong to change the whole current of his thoughts and
feelings.

Ellen and her two lovers (for both, though perhaps not equally, deserved
that epithet) had met, as usual, at the close of a sweet summer day, and
were standing by the side of the stream, just where it swept into a deep
pool. The current, undermining the bank, had formed a recess, which,
according to Edward Walcott, afforded at that moment a hiding-place to a
trout of noble size.

"Now would I give the world," he exclaimed with great interest, "for a
hook and line, a fish-spear, or any piscatorial instrument of death! Look,
Ellen, you can see the waving of his tail from beneath the bank!"

"If you had the means of taking him, I should save him from your cruelty,
thus," said Ellen, dropping a pebble into the water, just over the fish.
"There! he has darted down the stream. How many pleasant caves and
recesses there must be under these banks, where he may be happy! May there
not be happiness in the life of a fish?" she added, turning with a smile
to Fanshawe.