darlings! We smile at their little
vanities, as if they were very trivial things compared with the last
Congressman's speech or the great election sermon; but Nature knows well
what she is about. The maiden's ribbon or ruffle means a great deal more
for her than the judge's wig or the priest's surplice.

It was not in this way that the gentle emotion awaking in the breast of
Myrtle Hazard betrayed itself. As the thought dawned in her
consciousness that she was loved, a change came over her such as the
spirit that protected her, according to the harmless fancy she had
inherited, might have wept for joy to behold, if tears could flow from
angelic eyes. She forgot herself and her ambitions,--the thought of
shining in the great world died out in the presence of new visions of a
future in which she was not to be her own,--of feelings in the depth of
which the shallow vanities which had drawn her young eyes to them for a
while seemed less than nothing. Myrtle had not hitherto said to herself
that Clement was her lover, yet her whole nature was expanding and
deepening in the light of that friendship which any other eye could have
known at a glance for the great passion.

Cynthia Badlam wrote a pressing letter to Murray Bradshaw. "There is no
time to be lost; she is bewitched, and will be gone beyond hope if this
business is not put a stop to."

Love moves in an accelerating ratio; and there comes a time when the
progress of the passion escapes from all human formulae, and brings two
young hearts, which had been gradually drawing nearer and nearer
together, into complete union, with a suddenness that puts an infinity
between the moment when all is told and that which went just before.

They were sitting together by themselves in the dimly lighted parlor.
They had told each other many experiences of their past lives, very
freely, as two intimate friends of different sex might do. Clement had
happened to allude to Susan, speaking very kindly and tenderly of her.
He hoped this youth to whom she was attached would make her life happy.
"You know how simple-hearted and good she is; her image will always be a
pleasant one in my memory,--second to but one other."

Myrtie ought, according to the common rules of conversation, to have
asked, _What other?_ but she did not. She may have looked as if she
wanted to ask,--she may have blushed or turned pale,--perhaps she could
not trust her voice; but whatever the reason was, she sat stil