She puzzled him, too, and he found singular
contradictions in her: to-night, sweetness itself,--to-morrow, petulant
as a spoiled child. She had all a child's curiosity, too; and he amused
himself by seeing, at one time, with what novelty his adventures struck
her, when, at another, he would have fancied she had always held Taj and
Himmaleh in her garden. Now and then, excited, perhaps, by emulation and
wonder, her natural joyousness broke through the usually sad and quiet
demeanor; and she related to him, with dramatic _abandon_, scenes of her
gay and innocent island-life, so that he fancied there was not an
emotion in her experience hidden from his knowledge, till, all-unaware,
he tripped over one reserve and another, that made her, for the moment,
as mysterious a being as any of those court-ladies of ancient _regimes_,
in whose lives there were strange _lacunae_, and spaces of shadow. And a
peculiarity of their intercourse was, that, let her depart in what freak
or perversity she pleased, she seemed always to have a certainty of
finding him in the same mood in which she had left him,--as some bright
wayward vine of Southern forests puts out a tendril to this or that
enticing point, yet, winding back, will find its first support
unchanged.
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