“All caught, however,” retorted the laughing fair one, who was a cousin of Miss Vere’s; “that’s something, Nancy,” she continued, turning to the timid damsel who had first approached the Dwarf; “will you ask your fortune?”

“Not for worlds,” said she, drawing back; “I have heard enough of yours.”

“Well, then,” said Miss Ilderton, offering money to the Dwarf, “I’ll pay for mine, as if it were spoken by an oracle to a princess.”

“Truth,” said the Soothsayer, “can neither be bought nor sold;” and he pushed back her proffered offering with morose disdain.

“Well, then,” said the lady, “I’ll keep my money, Mr. Elshender, to assist me in the chase I am to pursue.”

“You will need it,” replied the cynic; “without it, few pursue successfully, and fewer are themselves pursued.—­Stop!” he said to Miss Vere, as her companions moved off, “With you I have more to say.  You have what your companions would wish to have, or be thought to have,—­beauty, wealth, station, accomplishments.”

“Forgive my following my companions, father; I am proof both to flattery and fortune-telling.”

“Stay,” continued the Dwarf, with his hand on her horse’s rein, “I am no common soothsayer, and I am no flatterer.  All the advantages I have detailed, all and each of them have their corresponding evils—­unsuccessful love, crossed affections, the gloom of a convent, or an odious alliance.  I, who wish ill to all mankind, cannot wish more evil to you, so much is your course of life crossed by it.”

“And if it be, father, let me enjoy the readiest solace of adversity while prosperity is in my power.  You are old; you are poor; your habitation is far from human aid, were you ill, or in want; your situation, in many respects, exposes you to the suspicions of the vulgar, which are too apt to break out into actions of brutality.  Let me think I have mended the lot of one human being!  Accept of such assistance as I have power to offer; do this for my sake, if not for your own, that when these evils arise, which you prophesy perhaps too truly, I may not have to reflect, that the hours of my happier time have been passed altogether in vain.”

The old man answered with a broken voice, and almost without addressing himself to the young lady,—­

“Yes, ’tis thus thou shouldst think—­’tis thus thou shouldst speak, if ever human speech and thought kept touch with each other!  They do not—­they do not—­Alas! they cannot.  And yet—­wait here an instant—­stir not till my return.”  He went to his little garden, and returned with a half-blown rose.  “Thou hast made me shed a tear, the first which has wet my eyelids for many a year; for that good deed receive this token of gratitude.  It is but a common rose; preserve it, however, and do not part with it.  Come to me in your hour of adversity.  Show me that rose, or but one leaf of it, were it withered as my heart is—­if it should be in my fiercest and wildest movements of rage against a hateful world, still it will recall gentler thoughts to my bosom, and perhaps afford happier prospects to thine.  But no message,” he exclaimed, rising into his usual mood of misanthropy,—­“no message—­no go-between!  Come thyself; and the heart and the doors that are shut against every other earthly being, shall open to thee and to thy sorrows.  And now pass on.”