ange, if Adele had not some day formed her ideal
of a lover. What young girl, indeed, does not? Who cannot recall the
sweet illusions of those tripping youthful years, when, for the first
time, Sir William Wallace strode so gallantly with waving plume and
glittering falchion down the pages of Miss Porter,--when sweet Helen Mar
wasted herself in love for the hero,--when the sun-browned Ivanhoe
dashed so grandly into that famous tilting-ground near to
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and brought the wicked Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert to
a reckoning,--when we wished the disinherited knight better things than
the cold love of the passionless Rowena, and sighed over the fate of
poor Fergus MacIvor? With all these characters, and many other such,
Adele had made acquaintance, in company with her dear Rose; and by the
light of them, they had fashioned such ideals in their little heads as
do not often appear in the flesh. Not that the two friends always agreed
in their dreamy fancies; but for either, a hero must have been handsome
and brave and true and kind and sagacious and learned. If only a few
hundred of men should be patterned after the design of a young girl of
sixteen or eighteen, what an absurd figure we old sinners should cut in
the comparison! Yet it is pleasant to reflect that thousands of fresh
young hearts do go on, year after year, conceiving of wonderful
excellences as pertaining to the baser sex; and the knowledge of the
fact should, it would seem, give a little more of animation to our
struggles against the deviltries and brutalities of the world.

But the ideal of our friend Adele had not been constant. Three years
back, the open, frank, brave front which Phil Elderkin wore had almost
reached it; and when Rose had said,--as she was wont to say, in her
sisterly pride,--"He's a noble fellow," there had been a little tingling
of the heart in Adele, which seemed to echo the words. Afterward had
come that little glimpse of the world which her journey and intercourse
with Maverick had afforded; and the country awkwardness of the Elderkins
had somehow worked an eclipse of his virtues. Reuben, indeed, had
comeliness, and had caught at that time some of the graces of the city;
but Reuben was a _tease_, and failed in a certain quality of respect for
her, (at least, she fancied it,) in default of which she met all his
favors with a sisterly tenderness, in which there was none of the
reserve that tempts passion to declare itself.

Late