ks that kindled his vanity into a
flame. Debating clubs afforded another field for display, and he
made liberal use of the facility. So much for Charles Fenwick.

Of Adelaide Merton, we may remark, that she was just the kind of a
woman to captivate a young man of Fenwick's character. She was showy
in her style of conversation, but exceedingly superficial. Her
reading consisted principally of poetry and the popular light
literature of the day, with a smattering of history. She could
repeat, in quite an attractive style, many fine passages from Homer,
Virgil, Milton, Shakspeare, Pope, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, and a
host of lesser lights in the poetic hemisphere--and could quote from
and criticise the philosophy and style of Bulwer with the most
edifying self-satisfaction imaginable--not to enumerate her many
other remarkable characteristics.

A second visit to Adelaide confirmed the first favorable impression
made upon the mind of Fenwick. At the third visit he was half in
love with her, and she more than half in love with him. A fourth
interview completed the work on both sides. At the fifth, the
following conversation terminated the pleasant intercourse of the
evening. They were seated on a sofa, and had been talking of poetry,
and birds, and flowers, green fields, and smiling landscapes, and a
dozen other things not necessary to be repeated at present. A pause
of some moments finally succeeded, and each seemed deeply absorbed
in thought.

"Adelaide," at length the young man said in a low, musical tone,
full of richness and pathos--"Do you not feel, sometimes, when your
mind rises into the region of pure thoughts, and ranges free among
the beautiful and glorious images that then come and go like angel
visitants, a sense of loneliness, because another cannot share what
brings to you such exquisite delight?"

"Yes--often and often," replied the maiden lifting her eyes to those
of Fenwick, and gazing at him with a tender expression.

"And yet few there are, Adelaide, few indeed who could share such
elevating pleasures."

"Few, indeed," was the response.

"Pardon me, for saying," resumed the young man, "that to you I have
been indebted for such added delights. Rarely, indeed, have I been
able to find, especially among your gentler sex, one who could rise
with me into the refining, elevating, exquisite pleasures of the
imagination. But you have seemed fully to appreciate my sentiments,
and fully to sympathize wit