Page:Clermont - Roche (1798, volume 1).djvu/37

 trees, was a low rock overshadowed by willows, upon which Madeline loved to sit, and watch the gambols of the summer flies upon the water, and those of its speckled inhabitants. Somewhat fatigued by her walk, she determined to go thither, and there wait the return of her father.

As she passed the castle, she turned her eyes towards it, but all around was awful uninterrupted solitude. The stranger she concluded had departed: but how great was her surprise when, on advancing a few steps farther, she beheld him, the same she was convinced of whom she had a transient view the preceding evening,—the same, she had no doubt, that Jaqueline had described to her in the morning,—seated on the rock, retouching a landscape laid against a book, and which, by the distant view Madeline had of it, appeared to be one of the surrounding scenes.