it applies. To most things that affect the spirits she is not more
sensitive than other girls, perhaps less so; but she is certainly
very impressionable in some things."

"In what?"

"She is more moved than any one I ever knew by objects in external
nature, rural scenery, rural sounds, by music, by the books that she
reads,--even books that are not works of imagination. Perhaps in all this
she takes after her poor father, but in a more marked degree,--at least, I
observe it more in her; for he was very silent and reserved. And perhaps
also her peculiarities have been fostered by the seclusion in which she
has been brought up. It was with a view to make her a little more like
girls of her own age that our friend, Mrs. Poyntz, induced me to come
here. Lilian was reconciled to this change; but she shrank from the
thoughts of London, which I should have preferred. Her poor father could
not endure London."

"Miss Ashleigh is fond of reading?"

"Yes, she is fond of reading, but more fond of musing. She will sit by
herself for hours without book or work, and seem as abstracted as if in a
dream. She was so even in her earliest childhood. Then she would tell me
what she had been conjuring up to herself. She would say that she had
seen--positively seen--beautiful lands far away from earth; flowers and
trees not like ours. As she grew older this visionary talk displeased me,
and I scolded her, and said that if others heard her, they would think
that she was not only silly but very untruthful. So of late years she
never ventures to tell me what, in such dreamy moments, she suffers
herself to imagine; but the habit of musing continues still. Do you not