It is difficult to exaggerate the effect that this discovery produced on Leonard's train of thought.

Some one belonging to his own humble race had, then, preceded him in his struggling flight towards the loftier regions of Intelligence and Desire.

It was like the mariner amidst unknown seas, who finds carved upon some desert isle a familiar household name.
And this creature of genius and of sorrow-whose existence he had only learned by her song, and whose death created, in the simple heart of her sister, so passionate a grief, after the lapse of so many years--supplied to the romance awaking in his young heart the ideal which it unconsciously sought.

He was pleased to hear that she had been beautiful and good.

He paused from his books to muse on her, and picture her image to his fancy.