Why, he never goes where he should;
that is, you may hang him a dome, with golden draperies, stud the walls
with pearls and rubies, put a divinity there, beautiful as the fabled
houris, and robed in eastern magnificence, with discretion's self to
open the portal and invite his entrance; still, he goes not in. A
humming-bird around a rose has caught his vagrant eye, and he is off to
follow its roamings from flower to flower. Was ever such an improvident,
self-willed creature as this boy, Cupid?

CHAPTER X.

"It is an era strange, yet sweet,
Which every woman's heart hath known,
When first her bosom learns to beat
To the soft music of a tone;
That era, when she first begins
To know what love alone can teach,
That there are hidden depths within
Which friendship never yet could reach."

Annie Evalyn was alone in her room, a second time, sitting down to
answer her friend Netta's letter. It was the first leisure she had known
in several weeks, and she would hardly have commanded it now, but that
Sheldon was gone to conclude an extensive land contract, into which he
was entering with Lawrence Hardin; allured by flattering representations
of the immense emolument sure to result from these speculations, when
emigration should raise to an untold value the worth of those extensive
tracts, then lying wild and uncultivated through those western
countries.

Dr. Prague had also advised him to the course, regarding it as the
easiest method of keeping good the fortune of Sheldon, whose choice of
literature as a profession tended rather to diminish than increase his
coffers. And so he embarked his all with Hardin; and all thought him
sure to succeed in the enterprise, with so far-seeing and judicious a
partner to counsel and direct.

We return to Annie. She had opened her portfolio, and placed before her
a pure, virgin page. Twirling the enamelled top from her inkstand, and
fastening a gold pen to a pearl-wrought handle, she commenced her task.

"I scarcely know what to say, dear Netta; there are so many thoughts
crowded on my brain for utterance, that I can scarcely decide what
it is best to say, and what leave unsaid. One thing I feel sure of,
that whatever is imparted in confidence, will remain safe in your
trusty bosom; and O, how blessed am I, in t