The company round about opened their eyes and looked aghast, or opened their mouths and devoured their supper in silence; but the conversation did not certainly receive that direction from an intention on the part of either of the two to excite astonishment in the listeners. It is very probable that neither of them had the slightest intention of giving it the direction which it took. It very often happens that a single chance word; the most remote or trifling accident; some circumstance scarcely noted even by ourselves; the fall of a spoon, or the change of a plate, or any other insignificant occurrence, will set that rapid flyer, thought, winging her way through the endless regions of imagination and memory, leading after her words and even feelings into directions the most remote from the occurrences which first gave them rise. A single word, a single tone, a single look, is often sufficient, not only to carry us away into trains of idea and conversation quite different from all that we had proposed to follow, but more, far more! to throw open the gates of a new fate before us, and lead us onward to our destiny through narrow, tortuous, and darkling tracts, which we would never otherwise have trod.
If any one had a design in leading the conversation in the direction which we have mentioned, it was Mr. Driesen; and it might be so, for these were not only subjects of which he was fond himself, as a clever and a learned man, but they were also those on which he fancied that his young acquaintance, all hot from Oxford, would be prompt to speak, especially as he had learned that Charles Tyrrell had devoted himself earnestly to study.
Eager in all things, and with a taste naturally fine and cultivated, Charles Tyrrell followed the lead willingly, and, ending his supper before the rest, he still carried it on, though Mr. Driesen himself soon showed a disposition to profit by the good things set before him, and took care of the corporeal part of his being at the expense of the supper.
At length, perceiving such to be the case, Charles Tyrrell ceased; and, thinking the time long, turned to the door to see if the horses were not yet put to. Just as he was entering the passage on quitting the supper-room, the opposite door opened, and a lady came partly out, bearing a light in her hand. She was turning her head to speak to some one within the room, and at first all that Charles Tyrrell could see was a beautiful figure, graceful in every line; but more peculiarly graceful from the manner in which the head was turned, showing the beautiful hair, fine, full, and glossy as silk, gathered up into a knot at the back of the head, from which one or two curls escaped, and fell upon the fair neck below. The form and the attitude were beautiful, but that attitude lasted only for a moment; for the first step of Charles Tyrrell made her turn round, not with any quick and nervous start, but quietly and slowly, to see who it was so near; and the moment she had seen the stranger, she withdrew again quietly into the room and closed the door, probably divining that the members of the supper party belonging to the stagecoach were about to resume their journey, and resolving to let them depart ere she proceeded whithersoever she was going.