She  had  a  beautiful  little  bay  mare  for  her  own
use.  She  enjoyed  best  the  long  stretches  to  the
southwards,  towards  the  San  Leandro  region.  She
generally  rode  quite  alone,  and  was  as  fearless
and  graceful  in  her  flight  as  a  sparrow-hawk.  At
home  she  read  a  good  deal,  but  never  played
music,  or  even  dabbled  in  fine  art.  Her  garden
was  her  only  artistic  activity.  She  was,  how-
ever, in  her  way,  quite  an  entertainer.  Her  cir-
cle of  friends  was  carefully  chosen ;  her  talk  was
vivacious,  fairly  well  informed,  and  even,  accord-
ing to  some  of  the  very  youngest  of  her  friends,
at  times  profound.  She  had  ^n  uncommonly  well-
skilled  practical  sense,  and  some  knowledge  of
business.  She  had  a  longing,  and  not  a  very
secret  one,  to  be  thought,  moreover,  generally
intelligent.  She  loved  to  fix  her  dark-brown  eyes
on  any  learned  man  whom  she  might  have  enticed
to  the  house,  and  to  fascinate  him  with  her  modest
and  rapturous  delight  in  the  subject  of  his  spe-
cialty. She  was  not  precisely  insincere  in  all
this,  for  the  first  sight  of  a  learned  man,  particu-
larly if  he  chanced  to  be  a  little  noted,  always
made  her  heart  beat  with  a  warm  enthusiasm.
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THE  LADY  OF  THE  HILLSIDE,  11

Learning  was  something  so  far  above  common-
place life,  so  pure  and  so  religiously  cold!  To
be  learned,  she  thought,  ought  to  be  much  the
same  thing  as  to  be  saintly.  Unhappily,  the
concrete  tjases  of  men  of  learning,  when  she  saw
them,  usually  disappointed  her,  though  her  melt^
ing  brown  eyes  and  her  pale,  gently  admiring  face
never  revealed  the  fact  to  them.
