"It is not much farther, dear Miss Betsy," said the girl, laughing, "and the path will improve. Our friend offered you his arm; why did you refuse it?"
The little woman drew closer to her, and said softly, "My dear Mary, what a question to ask! you know that I have my reasons for declining to be helped down hills by unmarried young gentlemen! when one slips and holds him tight to save oneself from falling, he might take each pinch for a proof of affection; you quite shock me, child!"
Mary smiled almost imperceptibly; then she went calmly on her way. Her dark bonnet hid all her face from the young man except the waving brown curls.
"It was intended as no mere compliment, sir." she said, glancing unembarrassed towards him; "when my father confessed that your absence had caused him pain: if I remember rightly, you have only called on us four times since my poor brother's death."
"Four times!" he cried; "and have you counted them?"
"We must often hear the number from him. 'Since I lost Edward,' he says frequently, 'I care to talk to no one who has not known him; how can they ever learn to know me?' Then he always refers to you, and praises you, and misses you so much."
"I confess," said Theodore, "that the kindness and heartiness with which your parents greeted me when we met here, surprised and affected me very much; and I too have wanted companionship this winter more than formerly. In the one before, which was my first, I drew back from nothing which pressed itself forward and promised to be advantageous. I see now that I have only lost. The society here is in contradiction to the place. It feels it itself, and as it still desires to be something, it is obliged to overstrain itself: that is discordant and neutralizes the productive disposition of thoughtful men like myself; so now I live only for myself, or for some few who have fared no better than I have, and yet from my youth up I have been accustomed to find permanent happiness in pure family existence alone."
"You have been long away from your parents?"
"I have lost them." he said gently; "they both died in the same week; then I went over the Alps, and God knows whether I shall ever return!"
They passed beneath the light shadow of the olive plantation--the path was perfectly dry--over them, amongst the branches, the sun glanced from the fleeting snow, which it had thawed upon the leaves, till they had glimmered as from a soft spring shower. The little friend was in the best possible humour, and talked of her wanderings about Rome. People suspected that she was writing a book about Rome. However that might be, it was clearly proved that she had done such violence to her well-grounded opinions, as to permit it to be reported that she had explored the baths of Caracalla with an entirely unknown and youthful Italian, and had not even refused his offer of protection to her own house.