lighten up with a radiant smile of intelligence; not, however,
throwing the light upon him, and in a moment reverting to its former
condition of still twilight. Her person seemed not to be as yet
thoroughly possessed or informed by her spirit. It sat apart within
her; and there was no ready transit from her heart to her face.
This lack of presence in the face is quite common in pretty
school-girls and rustic beauties; but it was manifest to an unusual
degree in the case of Margaret. Yet most of the forms and lines in
her face were lovely; and when the light did shine through them for
a passing moment, her countenance seemed absolutely beautiful.
Hence it grew into an almost haunting temptation with Hugh, to try
to produce this expression, to unveil the coy light of the beautiful
soul. Often he tried; often he failed, and sometimes he succeeded.
Had they been alone it might have become dangerous--I mean for
Hugh; I cannot tell for Margaret.

When they first met, she had just completed her seventeenth year;
but, at an age when a town-bred girl is all but a woman, her manners
were those of a child. This childishness, however, soon began to
disappear, and the peculiar stillness of her face, of which I have
already said so much, made her seem older than she was.

It was now early summer, and all the other trees in the wood--of
which there were not many besides the firs of various kinds--had put
on their fresh leaves, heaped up in green clouds between the
wanderer and the heavens. In the morning the sun shone so clear
upon these, that, to the eyes of one standing beneath, the light
seemed to dissolve them away to the most ethereal forms of glorified
foliage. They were to be claimed for earth only by the shadows that
the one cast upon the other, visible from below through the