With all these cheering influences around her, Virginia's countenance would have been soon clad in her wonted smiles, had it not been for an unbidden scene which every now and then was conjured up before her imagination, in which those near and dear to her were principal actors. But these, painful and inexplicable as they seemed to her, were far from being well defined in her own mind. For her life, she could not separate the real evidences of her drowsy senses from the vivid images of her imagination. She was firmly impressed, however, with the belief, that some parts of them were true and real transactions! She firmly believed that she had seen her mother and the Recluse during the night--not together certainly, but near the same spot and in quick succession; and she as firmly believed that she had seen the latter disable the watch-dog, mount over the palisade, and hurry away in his boat. So much was indeed true; her mother had actually visited the wounded youth during the night, and she had actually walked in the garden, and the Recluse was actually there, but no meeting took place, except in the imagination of the worn-out maiden.
She entered the breakfast room with these various impressions, real and imaginary, curiously mingled and confused, and bearing upon her own countenance an expression of embarrassment not less surprising to her mother, who was the first person she encountered. Twenty times she was on the point of asking her mother whether she had walked in the garden during the night, but as often a strange embarrassment came over her, resulting partly from what she thought she had seen, and partly from words dropped by the Recluse in her hearing--the whole confused, unarranged and undigested--the latter perhaps being entirely unrecognised by her consciousness, but still operating imperceptibly upon her conduct. She was not a little astonished, therefore, when her mother came directly to the point occupying her own thoughts at the moment, saying, as she approached her, and affectionately smoothed down the clustering ringlets upon her brow. "You slept upon your post last night, my dear daughter? Nay--no excuses--there needs none. You wanted rest, little less than he whom you watched."
