Meantime the interest he felt in his girl-pupil deepened greatly.  She became a kind of study to him.  The expression of her countenance was far inferior to her intelligence and power of thought.  It was still to excess—­almost dull in ordinary; not from any fault in the mould of the features, except, perhaps, in the upper lip, which seemed deficient in drawing, if I may be allowed the expression; but from the absence of that light which indicates the presence of active thought and feeling within.  In this respect her face was like the earthen pitcher of Gideon:  it concealed the light.  She seemed to have, to a peculiar degree, the faculty of retiring inside.  But now and then, while he was talking to her, and doubtful, from the lack of expression, whether she was even listening with attention to what he was saying, her face would lighten up with a radiant smile of intelligence; not, however, throwing the light upon him, and in a moment reverting to its former condition of still twilight.  Her person seemed not to be as yet thoroughly possessed or informed by her spirit.  It sat apart within her; and there was no ready transit from her heart to her face.  This lack of presence in the face is quite common in pretty school-girls and rustic beauties; but it was manifest to an unusual degree in the case of Margaret.  Yet most of the forms and lines in her face were lovely; and when the light did shine through them for a passing moment, her countenance seemed absolutely beautiful.  Hence it grew into an almost haunting temptation with Hugh, to try to produce this expression, to unveil the coy light of the beautiful soul.  Often he tried; often he failed, and sometimes he succeeded.  Had they been alone it might have become dangerous—­I mean for Hugh; I cannot tell for Margaret.

When they first met, she had just completed her seventeenth year; but, at an age when a town-bred girl is all but a woman, her manners were those of a child.  This childishness, however, soon began to disappear, and the peculiar stillness of her face, of which I have already said so much, made her seem older than she was.

It was now early summer, and all the other trees in the wood—­of which there were not many besides the firs of various kinds—­had put on their fresh leaves, heaped up in green clouds between the wanderer and the heavens.  In the morning the sun shone so clear upon these, that, to the eyes of one standing beneath, the light seemed to dissolve them away to the most ethereal forms of glorified foliage.  They were to be claimed for earth only by the shadows that the one cast upon the other, visible from below through the transparent leaf.  This effect is very lovely in the young season of the year, when the leaves are more delicate and less crowded; and especially in the early morning, when the light is most clear and penetrating.  By the way, I do not think any man is compelled to bid good-bye to his childhood:  every man may feel young in the morning, middle-aged in the afternoon, and old at night.  A day corresponds to a life, and the portions of the one are “pictures in little” of the seasons of the other.  Thus far man may rule even time, and gather up, in a perfect being, youth and age at once.