ece could have, and not only introduced him into the house,
but stood so much his friend during the first days of his courtship that
she gradually imparted to her niece her own enthusiasm, till the poor
girl saw--or thought she saw--the ideal of her dreams in the base and
shallow being whom I called my friend.

"However that may be, she certainly rose from her spinet that night in a
pretty confusion that made her absolutely lovely, and advancing with the
mingled dignity of the heiress and the tender bashfulness of the maiden
in the presence of him she loved, she tendered us a courtesy whose grace
put me out of ease with myself, so much it expressed the manners of
people removed from the sphere in which it had hitherto been my lot to
move.

"But Urquhart showed no embarrassment. His fine figure--he had
that--bent forward with the most courtly of bows, and after the
introduction of my humble self to her notice, he entered into a
conversation which, if shallow, was at least bright, and for the moment
interesting. As I had no wish to talk, I gave myself up to watching her,
and came away at last more fixed than ever in my belief of her extreme
worthiness and of his extreme presumption in thinking of calling so
perfect a creature his.

"'Would to God she was as poor as Janet Fairfax,' I thought to myself.
'Then she would never have attracted his attention, and might have known
what happiness was with some man who could appreciate her. Now she is
doomed, and being fatherless and motherless, will rush on to her fate,
and no one can stop her.'

"Thus I thought, and thus I continued to think as chance and Urquhart's
stubborn will led me more and more to her house, and within the radius
of her gentle influence. But my thoughts never went further. I never saw
her, even in my dreams, fostered by me, or soothed of an old grief by my
love and affection. For though she was a dainty and gracious being, with
beauty enough to delight the eyes and warm the heart, she was not the
one destined to move me, and awake the tumultuous passions that lay
dormant in my own scarcely understood nature. Urquhart, therefore, was
not acting unwisely in taking me there so often, though, if I could have
foreseen what was likely to be the result of those visits, I should have
leaped from my house's roof on to the stones below before I had passed
again under those fatal portals.

"And yet--would I? Do we fear suffering or apathy most? Is it from
experi