Her reading had been very limited as yet, and the book she was reading so eagerly was a French translation of the Bride of Lammermoor.

The romance of it spoke directly to her imagination; but when the book was closed she did not believe that she had a romantic disposition.

It is an indisputable fact that the people to whom the strangest things happen never regard themselves as romantic characters, whatever others may think of them.

They are, indeed, more often active and daring people, to whom what others think extraordinary seems quite natural and easy.

They make the events out of which humanity's appetite for romance is fed, and become, to humanity, themselves the unconscious embodiments of romance itself.