hat the youth loves the girl, and loves in
vain. All in this writing, though terse, is so truthful! Leonard, in the
youth, already recognizes the rude imperfect scholar, the village bard,
Mark Fairfield. Then there is a gap in description; but there are short
weighty sentences, which show deepening thought, increasing years, in
the writer. And though the innocence remains, the happiness begins to be
less vivid on the page.

Now, insensibly, Leonard finds that there is a new phase in the writer's
existence. Scenes no longer of humble, workday rural life surround her,
and a fairer and more dazzling image succeeds to the companion of the
Sabbath eves. This image Nora evidently loves to paint,--it is akin to
her own genius; it captivates her fancy; it is an image that she (inborn
artist, and conscious of her art) feels to belong to a brighter and
higher school of the Beautiful. And yet the virgin's heart is not
awakened,--no trace of the heart yet there! The new image thus
introduced is one of her own years, perhaps; nay, it may be younger
still, for it is a boy that is described, with his profuse fair curls,
and eyes new to grief, and confronting the sun as a young eagle's; with
veins so full of the wine of life, that they overflow into every joyous
whim; with nerves quiveringly alive to the desire of glory; with the
frank generous nature, rash in its laughing scorn of the world, which
it has not tried. Who was this boy? it perplexed Leonard. He feared to
guess. Soon, less told than implied, you saw that this companionship,
however it chanced, brings fear and pain on the writer. Again (as
before, with Mark Fairfield), there is love on the one side and not on
the other; with her there is affectionate, almost sisterly, interest,
admiration, gratitude, but a something of pride or of terror that keeps
back love.

Here Leonard's interest grew intense. Were there touches by which
conjecture grew certainty; and he recognized, through the lapse of
years, the boy-lover in his own generous benefactor?

Fragments of dialogue now began to reveal the suit of an ardent,
impassioned nature, and the simple wonder and strange alarm of a
listener who pitied but could not sympathize. Some great worldly
distinction of rank between the two became visible,--that distinction
seemed to arm the virtue and steel the affections of the lowlier born.
Then a few sentences, half blotted out with tears, told of wounded and
humbled feelings,--some one