educated, and is a lady, that is easy to see."

"It is very strange," said Septimius, "but I fear I shall be a good deal
interrupted in my thoughts and studies, if she insists on haunting my
hill-top as much as she tells me. My meditations are perhaps of a little
too much importance to be shoved aside for the sake of gratifying a crazy
girl's fantasies."

"Ah, that is a hard thing to say!" exclaimed Rose, shocked at her lover's
cold egotism, though not giving it that title. "Let the poor thing glide
quietly along in the path, though it be yours. Perhaps, after a while, she
will help your thoughts."

"My thoughts," said Septimius, "are of a kind that can have no help from
any one; if from any, it would only be from some wise, long-studied, and
experienced scientific man, who could enlighten me as to the bases and
foundation of things, as to mystic writings, as to chemical elements, as
to the mysteries of language, as to the principles and system on which we
were created. Methinks these are not to be taught me by a girl touched in
the wits."

"I fear," replied Rose Garfield with gravity, and drawing imperceptibly
apart from him, "that no woman can help you much. You despise woman's
thought, and have no need of her affection."

Septimius said something soft and sweet, and in a measure true, in regard
to the necessity he felt for the affection and sympathy of one woman at
least--the one now by his side--to keep his life warm and to make the
empty chambers of his heart comfortable. But even while he spoke, there
was something that dragged upon his tongue; for he felt that the solitary