For many days the myriad leaves of the forest had lain everywhere in the dry atmosphere peculiar to a Canadian autumn, till it seemed now that all weight and moisture had left them.
They were curled and puckered into half balloons, ready for the wind to toss and drift into every available gap.

So strewn was this passage with such dry leaves, which even now the wind was drifting upon it more thickly, that the danger might easily have remained unseen.

Then, as fancy is fickle, her mind darted from the pleasurable idea of her own death to consider how it would be if she did not make known her discovery and allowed her enemy to walk into the snare.

This idea was not quite as attractive as the former, for it is sweeter to think of oneself as innocently dead and mourned, than as guilty and performing the office of mourner for another; and it was of herself only, whether as pictured in Bates's sufferings or as left liberated by his death, that the girl was thinking.

Still it afforded relaxation to imagine what she might do if she were thus left mistress of the situation; and she devised a scheme of action for these circumstances that, in its clever adaptation to what would be required, would have greatly amazed the man who looked upon her as an unthinking child.
The difference between a strong and a weak mind is not that the strong mind does not indulge itself in wild fancies, but that it never gives to such fancy the power of capricious sway over the centres of purpose.
This young woman was strong in mind as in body.