recognised by her: tiny plants springing near stones and peeping out of chinks in old walls—plants such as Caroline had scarcely noticed before—received a name and an intimation of their properties: it appeared that she had minutely studied the botany of English fields and woods. Haying reached the head of the ravine, they sat down together on a ledge of gray and mossy rock jutting from the base of a steep green hill, which towered above them: she looked round her, and spoke of the neighbourhood as she had once before seen it long ago. She alluded to its changes, and compared its aspect with that of other parts of England; revealing in quiet, unconscious touches of description, a sense of the picturesque, an appreciation of the beautiful or commonplace, a power of comparing the wild with the cultured, the grand with the tame, that gave to her discourse a graphic charm as pleasant as it was unpretending.
The sort of reverent pleasure with which Caroline listened—so sincere, so quiet, yet so evident, stirred the elder lady's faculties to gentle animation. Rarely, probably, had she, with her chill, repellent outside—her diffident mien and incommunicative habits, known what it was to excite in one whom she herself could love, feelings of earnest affection and admiring esteem. Delightful, doubtless, was the consciousness that a young girl towards whom it seemed—judging by the moved expression of her
