e solitary candle. Meanwhile the mistress
of the house had sat down to the piano, and began to play a waltz; and
soon the light branches of the palm-tree trembled in the whirlwind
caused by the passing couples. Eugenie silently watched the gay scene
before her. With her left hand she played with a gold chain, and in the
right, held carelessly a large bouquet on her lap.

Valentine stedfastly gazed at her; when she observed it, she took up
the nosegay and buried her face in it. "You think it somewhat
indiscreet on my part," he said, "that I sit before you, as though I
were admiring a fine painting; but is it not pardonable if I gaze with
astonishment on that soft bloom which remains as fresh as though hardly
a day had passed since our last meeting. If I banished from my mind the
thought that fourteen years have gone over my head, and that I may be a
married man to-morrow, I might easily delude myself into the belief
that I am sitting in the conservatory of your parent's house, and have
just laid aside the book in which I had been reading aloud to you, who
were meanwhile watching the gnats dancing on the pond, or the falling
of the leaves. In reality however, only youth can give us those hours
of enraptured extasy, that entire blending of the soul with the soul of
nature, when we are freed from the fetters of our own individuality
only to be united, like a plant, all the more closely with the
elements. When I walked home, still entranced, after one of those
evenings, I felt as if I were carried along the poplar alley, as a
feather is borne by the breeze. In later years we often call that
feeling sentimentality, but even now I cannot laugh at it."

"If I smiled at it in those days, I now feel as if I ought to apologize
for it. We girls are taught by our education to watch over our
sentiments, and to be cautious in our enthusiasms. Now I may confess to
you that I often only wished for Cora to disturb our reading hour by
her barking, or for Frederick to summon us to tea, because I could no
longer restrain my tears."

"You always had the firmer character of the two. The cement which has
consolidated my nature has only grown hard in the bracing atmosphere of
a stirring, and active life. But the names you have just uttered, what
remembrances they bring back to me! My friend, and my enemy, Frederick,
and Cora. That dear old Frederick. I know that he heartily pitied me, a
feeling which is said to be rare between rivals. You can