he entire
absence of wintry winds, and the rapid development of the country, and
when he had grown weary of discussions of investments at five per cent a
month, he ventured to interrupt Miss Minorkey's reverie by a remark to
which she responded. And he was soon in a current of delightful talk. The
young gentleman spoke with great enthusiasm; the young woman without
warmth, but with a clear intellectual interest in literary subjects, that
charmed her interlocutor. I say literary subjects, though the range of
the conversation was not very wide. It was a great surprise to Charlton,
however, to find in a new country a young woman so well informed.

Did he fall in love? Gentle reader, be patient. You want a love-story,
and I don't blame you. For my part, I should not take the trouble to
record this history if there were no love in it. Love is the universal
bond of human sympathy. But you must give people time. What we call
falling in love is not half so simple an affair as you think, though it
often looks simple enough to the spectator. Albert Charlton was pleased,
he was full of enthusiasm, and I will not deny that he several times
reflected in a general way that so clear a talker and so fine a thinker
would make a charming wife for some man--some intellectual man--some man
like himself, for instance. He admired Miss Minorkey. He liked her. With
an enthusiastic young man, admiring and liking are, to say the least,
steps that lead easily to something else. But you must remember how
complex a thing love is. Charlton--I have to confess it--was a little
conceited, as every young man is at twenty. He flattered himself that the
most intelligent woman he could find would be a good match for him. He
loved ideas, and a woman of ideas pleased his fancy. Add to this that he
had come to a time of life when he was very liable to fall in love with
somebody, and that he was in the best of spirits from the influence of
air and scenery and motion and novelty, and you render it quite probable
that he could not be tossed for half a day on the same seat in a coach
with such a girl as Helen Minorkey was--that, above all, he could not
discuss Hugh Miller and the "Vestiges of Creation" with her, without
imminent peril of experiencing an admiration for her and an admiration
for himself, and a liking and a palpitating and a castle-building that
under favorable conditions might somehow grow into that complex and
inexplicable feeling which we call lov