His fine, calm features expressed a certain grave patience, but nothing more.
She resumed-- "That was my first experience of real 'happiness.' Till then I had lived the usual monotonous life of childhood, doing what I was told, and going whither I was taken, but the disclosure of the sun-ray was a key to individuality, and seemed to unlock my prison doors.

I began to think for myself, and to find my own character as a creature apart from others.

My second experience was years after,--just when I left school and when my father took me to see the place where I was born, in the north of Scotland.

Oh, it is such a wild corner of the world! Beautiful craggy hills and dark, deep lakes--rough moorlands purple with heather and such wonderful skies at sunset! The cottage where my father had lived as a boy when he herded sheep is still there--I have bought it for myself now,--it is a little stone hut of three rooms,--and another one about a mile off where he took my mother to live, and where I came into the world!--I have bought that too.

Yes--I felt a great thrill of happiness when I stood there knee-deep among the heather, my father clasping my hand, and looking, with me, on those early scenes of his boyhood when he had scarcely a penny to call his own! Yet HE was sad!--very sad! and told me then that he would give all his riches to feel as light of heart and free from care as he did in those old days! And then--then we went to see old Alison--" Here she broke off,--a strange light came into her eyes and she smiled a little.