“Oh! then you only studied the maiden as the botanist would study a new plant, the geologist a new fossil, or the naturalist a strange animal?—”
—“Or the astronomer a new STAR? Precisely, sir! Except that the human being is the highest and most absorbing study of all!”
“Really! really! this passes belief—the proud, fastidious Archer Clifton, to be smitten with an ugly mountain-girl!”
“Frank! Nonsense—you really anger me. Listen, then, and I will tell you why that child—for she is but a child—interested me so much. I saw in her face the signs of wonderful force of character, as yet undeveloped, and I saw in all her actions that which corroborated their testimony. I was surprised to find all that in the humble mountaineer, and speculated as to what, in her very humble situation, it might lead. That was simply all!”
“And did you not wish to be a providence to the mountain girl, and open a field for so much energy?”
“Perhaps such a thought might have presented itself to my mind. If so, it was dismissed at once. A highly gifted man of low birth must have extraordinary talents indeed, and be placed in extraordinary circumstances, to elevate himself above his condition—for a girl in such a case it is impossible. But, Fairfax, really this conversation has taken a more serious tone than I designed it should. Really, nobility of character, though very rare among the lower classes of society, is yet not so impossible as to excite our wonder. There are others like Kate Kavanagh—”
—“How pat you’ve got her name! Now I had forgotten it!”
“Pooh! I say there are others like her. They are born great—they live and die, and the world hears nothing of them. And talents that might have swayed the counsels of a monarch, and decided the destinies of an empire, have been employed to direct the household of a shepherd, and determine the fate of a sheep! Such is the order of society, and better, far better so, than that its boundaries should be thrown down, its ranks intermingled!”
“There spoke a Clifton of Clifton!” said Frank.
They were now at the top of the ridge, and entering upon a hard, stony, half-reclaimed farm, in the midst of which stood a rude, but substantial house, built of hewn rocks of every shade of gray, and surrounded by trees. Below them, all around, rose the forest-crowned hills; behind them the white cliffs concealed the mansion of Clifton from their sight, all around them lay fields of stunted corn.