Evelyn made no answer for a few moments, and then, turning abruptly round to Caroline, and stopping short, she said, with a kind of tearful eagerness, "Dear Caroline, you are so wise, so kind too; advise me, tell me what is best. I am very unhappy." Miss Merton was moved and surprised by Evelyn's earnestness. "But what is it, my poor Evelyn," said she; "why are you unhappy?--you whose fate seems to me so enviable." "I cannot love Lord Vargrave; I recoil from the idea of marrying him. Ought I not fairly to tell him so? Ought I not to say that I cannot fulfil the wish that--oh, there's the thought which leaves me so irresolute!--His uncle bequeathed to me--me who have no claim of relationship--the fortune that should have been Lord Vargrave's, in the belief that my hand would restore it to him. It is almost a fraud to refuse him. Am I not to be pitied?" "But why can you not love Lord Vargrave? If past the _premiere jeunesse_, he is still handsome. He is more than handsome,--he has the air of rank, an eye that fascinates, a smile that wins, the manners that please, the abilities that command, the world! Handsome, clever, admired, distinguished--what can woman desire more in her lover, her husband? Have you ever formed some fancy, some ideal of the one you could love, and how does Lord Vargrave fall short of the vision?" "Have I ever formed an ideal?--oh, yes!" said Evelyn, with a beautiful enthusiasm that lighted up her eyes, blushed in her cheek, and heaved her bosom beneath its robe; "something that in loving I could also revere,--a mind that would elevate my own; a heart that could sympathize with my weakness, my follies, my romance, if you will; and in which I could treasure my whole soul." "You paint a schoolmaster, not a lover!" said Caroline. "You do not care, then, whether this hero be handsome or young?" "Oh, yes, he should be both," said Evelyn, innocently; "and yet," she added, after a pause, and with an infantine playfulness of manner and countenance, "I know you will laugh at me, but I think I could be in love with more than one at the same time!" "A common case, but a rare confession!" "Yes; for if I might ask for the youth and outward advantages that please the eye, I could also love with a yet deeper love that which would speak to my imagination,--Intellect, Genius, Fame! Ah, these have an immortal youth and imperishable beauty of their own!" "You are a very strange girl." "But we are on a very strange subject--it is all an enigma!" said Evelyn, shaking her wise little head with a pretty gravity, half mock, half real. "Ah, if Lord Vargrave should love you--and you--oh, you _would_ love him, and then I should be free, and so happy!"