There was a bouquet of violets on the table, which was Mr. Pitt the gardener’s daily quit-rent to Sara for all the honors and emoluments of his situation, so that every kind of ethereal sense was satisfied. Fanny Hardcastle dropped into a very low chair at one side of the fire, where she sat like a swan with her head and throat rising out of the white billowy waves which covered yards of space round about her. Sara, who was at home, drew a stool in front of the fire, and sat down there, heaping up in her turn snow-wreaths upon the rosy hearth. A sudden spark might have swallowed them both in fiery destruction. But the spark happily did not come; and they had their talk in great comfort and content. They touched upon a great many topics, skimming over them, and paying very little heed to logical sequences. And at last they stumbled into metaphysics, and had a curious little dive into the subject of love and love-making, as was not unnatural. It is to be regretted, however, that neither of these young women had very exalted ideas on this point. They were both girls of their period, who recognized the necessity of marriage, and that it was something likely to befall both of them, but had no exaggerated notions of its importance; and, indeed, so far from being utterly absorbed in the anticipation of it, were both far from clear whether they believed in such a thing as love. “I don’t think one ever could be so silly as they say in books,” said Fanny Hardcastle, “unless one was a great fool--feeling as if every thing was changed, you know, as soon as _he_ was out of the room, and feeling one’s heart beat when he was coming, and all that stuff; I don’t believe it Sara; do you?” “I don’t know,” said Sara, making a screen of her pretty laced handkerchief to protect her face from the firelight; “perhaps it is because one has never seen the right sort of man. The only man I have ever seen whom one could really love is papa.” “Papa!” echoed Fanny, faintly, and with surprise. Perhaps, after all, she had a lingering faith in ordinary delusions; at all events, there was nothing heroic connected in her mind with papas in general; and she could but sit still and gaze and wonder what next the spoiled child would say. “I wonder if mamma was very fond of him,” said Sara, meditatively. “She ought to have been, but I dare say she never knew him half as well as I do. That is the dreadful thing. You have to marry them before you know.” “Oh, Sara, don’t you believe in love at first sight?” said Fanny, forgetting her previously expressed sentiments. “I do.” Sara threw up her drooping head into the air with a little impatient motion. “I don’t think I believe any thing about it,” she said. “And yet there was once somebody that was fond of you,” said little Fanny breathlessly. “Poor Harry Mansfield, who was so nice--every body knows about that--and, I do think, Mr. Keppel, if you would not be so saucy to him--”