The third, who was best mounted, best dressed, and incomparably the best-looking of the three, advanced, as if to cover the incivility of her companions.
"We have lost the right path that leads through these morasses, and our party have gone forward without us," said the young lady.

"Seeing you, father, at the door of your house, we have turned this way to--" "Hush!" interrupted the Dwarf; "so young, and already so artful?
You came--you know you came, to exult in the consciousness of your own youth, wealth, and beauty, by contrasting them with age, poverty, and deformity.

It is a fit employment for the daughter of your father; but O how unlike the child of your mother!" "Did you, then, know my parents, and do you know me ?" "Yes; this is the first time you have crossed my waking eyes, but I have seen you in my dreams." "Your dreams ?" "Ay, Isabel Vere.

What hast thou, or thine, to do with my waking thoughts ?" "Your waking thoughts, sir," said the second of Miss Vere's companions, with a sort of mock gravity, "are fixed, doubtless, upon wisdom; folly can only intrude on your sleeping moments." "Over thine," retorted the Dwarf, more splenetically than became a philosopher or hermit, "folly exercises an unlimited empire, asleep or awake." "Lord bless us!" said the lady, "he's a prophet, sure enough." "As surely," continued the Recluse, "as thou art a woman .-- A woman!--I should have said a lady--a fine lady.

You asked me to tell your fortune--it is a simple one; an endless chase through life after follies not worth catching, and, when caught, successively thrown away--a chase, pursued from the days of tottering infancy to those of old age upon his crutches.