With eyes cast down I passed through the gallery, paying no attention to
its strange, stony occupants; and leaving my gentle conductress without
a word at the door of the music-room, I hurried away from the house. For
I could feel love and compassion in the touch of the dear girl's hand,
and it seemed to me that if she had spoken one word, my overcharged
heart would have found vent in tears. I only wished to be alone, to
brood in secret on my pain and the bitterness of defeat; for it was
plain that the woman I had so wished to see, and, since seeing her, so
wished to be allowed to love, felt towards me nothing but contempt and
aversion, and that from no fault of my own, she, whose friendship I most
needed, was become my enemy in the house.

My steps took me to the river. Following its banks for about a mile, I
came at last to a grove of stately old trees, and there I seated myself
on a large twisted root projecting over the water. To this sequestered
spot I had come to indulge my resentful feelings; for here I could speak
out my bitterness aloud, if I felt so minded, where there were no
witnesses to hear me. I had restrained those unmanly tears, so nearly
shed in Yoletta's presence, and kept back by dark thoughts on the way;
now I was sitting quietly by myself, safe from observation, safe even
from that sympathy my bruised spirit could not suffer.

Scarcely had I seated myself before a great brown animal, with black
eyes, round and fierce, rose to the surface of the stream half a dozen
yards from my feet; then quickly catching sight of me, it plunged
noisily again under water, breaking the clear image reflected there with
a hundred ripples. I waited for the last wavelet to fade away, but when
the surface was once more still and smooth as dark glass, I began to be
affected by the profounded silence and melancholy of nature, and by a