Miss Graeme began to doubt whether it was possible to hold rational converse with a man who, the moment they began upon anything, went straight aloft into some high-flying region of which she knew and for which she cared nothing.

But Donal's unconscious desire was in reality to meet her upon some common plane of thought.

He always wanted to meet his fellow, and hence that abundance of speech, which, however poetic the things he said, not a few called prosiness.
"I should think," resumed Miss Graeme, "if you want to work your imagination, you will find more scope for it at the castle than here! This is a poor modern place compared to that." "It is a poor imagination," returned Donal, "that requires age or any mere accessory to rouse it.

The very absence of everything external, the bareness of the mere humanity involved, may in itself be an excitement greater than any accompaniment of the antique or the picturesque.

But in this old-fashioned garden, in the midst of these old-fashioned flowers, with all the gentlenesses of old-fashioned life suggested by them, it is easier to imagine the people themselves than where all is so cold, hard, severe--so much on the defensive, as in that huge, sullen pile on the hilltop." "I am afraid you find it dull up there!" said Miss Graeme.
"Not at all," replied Donal; "I have there a most interesting pupil.
But indeed one who has been used to spend day after day alone, clouds and heather and sheep and dogs his companions, does not depend much for pastime.