t he made
no remark.

"There is nothing trivial in the exercise in such a combination. I
incline to think that beauty is almost the greatest of all the
spectacles that Nature sets before us. The effect she has upon us is
greater than that produced by any other influence. You are perhaps too
young to have your mind awakened on such a subject----"

To hear this foolish wisdom pouring forth, while the listener felt at
every breath how his own bosom thrilled with an emotion too deep to be
put into words, with a passion, hopeless, ridiculous, to which no one
would accord any sympathy or comment but a laugh! Heaven and earth! and
all because a fellow was some dozen years older, thinking himself a man,
and you only a boy!

"----but you have a fine intelligence, and it can never be amiss for you
to approach a great subject on its most elevated side. She is not much
older than you are, Jock."

"She is not so old as I am. She is three months younger than I am,"
cried Jock, in his gruffest voice.

"And yet she is a revelation," said Mr. Derwentwater. "I feel that I am
on the eve of a great crisis in my being. You have always been my
favourite, my friend, though you are so much younger; and in this I feel
we are more than ever sympathetic. Jock, to-morrow--to-morrow I am to
see her, to tell her---- Come out on the balcony, there is no one there,
and the moonlight and the pure air of night are more fit for such heart
opening than this crowded scene."

"What are you going to tell her?" said Jock, with his eyebrows meeting
over his eyes and his back against the wall. "If you think she'll listen
to what you tell her! She likes Montjoie. It is not that he's rich and
that, but she likes him, don't you know, better than any of us. Oh, talk
about mysteries," cried Jock, turning his head away, conscious of that
moisture which half-blinded him, but which he could not get rid of, "how
can you account for that? She likes him, that fellow, better than either
you or me!"

Better than Jock; far better than this man, his impersonation of noble
manhood, whom the most levelling of all emotions, the more than Red
Republican Love, had suddenly brought down to, nay, below, Jock's
level--for not only was he a fool like Jock, but a hopeful fool, while
Jock had penetrated the fulness of despair, and dismissed all illusion
from his youthful bosom. The boy turned his head away, and the voice
which he had made so gruff quavered at the end. He felt i