“Ignotus IGNOTAE!—­You have bestowed without intending it, and I have taken without your knowledge.  Do not regret the accident which has enriched another.  This concealed idyl of the hills was mine, as I supposed, but I acknowledge your equal right to it.  Shall we share the possession, or will you banish me?”

There was a frank advance, tempered by a proper caution, I fancied, in the words I wrote.  It was evident that she was unmarried, but outside of that certainty there lay a vast range of possibilities, some of them alarming enough.  However, if any nearer acquaintance should arise out of the incident, the next step must be taken by her.  Was I one of the men she sought?  I almost imagined so—­certainly hoped so.

I laid the book on the rock, as I had found it, bestowed another keen scrutiny on the lonely landscape, and then descended the ravine.  That evening, I went early to the ladies’ parlor, chatted more than usual with the various damsels whom I knew, and watched with a new interest those whom I knew not.  My mind, involuntarily, had already created a picture of the unknown.  She might be twenty-five, I thought:  a reflective habit of mind would hardly be developed before that age.  Tall and stately, of course; distinctly proud in her bearing, and somewhat reserved in her manners.  Why she should have large dark eyes, with long dark lashes, I could not tell; but so I seemed to see her.  Quite forgetting that I was (or had meant to be) Ignotus, I found myself staring rather significantly at one or the other of the young ladies, in whom I discovered some slight general resemblance to the imaginary character.  My fancies, I must confess, played strange pranks with me.  They had been kept in a coop so many years, that now, when I suddenly turned them loose, their rickety attempts at flight quite bewildered me.

No! there was no use in expecting a sudden discovery.  I went to the glen betimes, next morning:  the book was gone, and so were the faded flowers, but some of the latter were scattered over the top of another rock, a few yards from mine.  Ha! this means that I am not to withdraw, I said to myself:  she makes room for me!  But how to surprise her?—­for by this time I was fully resolved to make her acquaintance, even though she might turn out to be forty, scraggy, and sandy-haired.

I knew no other way so likely as that of visiting the glen at all times of the day.  I even went so far as to write a line of greeting, with a regret that our visits had not yet coincided, and laid it under a stone on the top of her rock.  The note disappeared, but there was no answer in its place.  Then I suddenly remembered her fondness for the noon hours, at which time she was “utterly alone.”  The hotel table d’hote was at one o’clock, her family, doubtless, dined later, in their own rooms.  Why, this gave me, at least, her place in society!  The question of age, to be sure, remained unsettled; but all else was safe.