It was therefore easy for her to leave the house unobserved, so soon as the time approached at which she was to keep her appointment.

But the step she was about to take had difficulties and terrors in her own eyes, though she had no reason to apprehend her father's interference.

Her life had been spent in the quiet, uniform, and regular seclusion of their peaceful and monotonous household.

The very hour which some damsels of the present day, as well of her own as of higher degree, would consider as the natural period of commencing an evening of pleasure, brought, in her opinion, awe and solemnity in it; and the resolution she had taken had a strange, daring, and adventurous character, to which she could hardly reconcile herself when the moment approached for putting it into execution.

Her hands trembled as she snooded her fair hair beneath the riband, then the only ornament or cover which young unmarried women wore on their head, and as she adjusted the scarlet tartan screen or muffler made of plaid, which the Scottish women wore, much in the fashion of the black silk veils still a part of female dress in the Netherlands.