left those mysterious glories of life, day after day and week after week, to go and ask for little Emmy. How wonderful this was! The devotion of Sister Mary Jane, the loving-kindness of Miss Cherry, faded before such an example; for they had not the world at their feet as this young paladin evidently had. This was how the first chapter of the story came about. It opened her eyes (Agnes thought) to nobleness undreamed of, and for the first few weeks the universe itself had grown more bright to her. Could it be possible, then, that in ‘the world’ itself, which the Sisters had abjured--in that splendid glorious ‘society’ which even ascetic books spoke of as something too full of enhancements and seductions to be resisted by any but the most heroic, there were still opportunities of living the highest unselfish life, to the glory of God and the comfort of man? When Agnes found that this ideal hero of hers had thoughts less exalted in his bosom--that so small a motive as the wish to see herself and talk to her, had something to do with his devotion to the orphan, her visionary mind received a shock. Probably, had Oswald’s enthusiasm been for another, she would have been permanently disquieted by the discovery; but there is something strangely conciliatory in the fact that it is one’s self who is admired and followed. Such trivial emotions detract from the perfection of an ideal character; but still it is a much more easy thing to forgive your own lover than anyone else’s. And the more he sought her, the more Agnes’s heart, in spite of herself, inclined towards the man who could be thus moved. The ideal stole away, but so insensibly, in rose-coloured clouds, that she had not discovered the departure of her first admiration and wonder before something else stole in. It was not all goodness, nobleness, Christian charity, perhaps, that moved him; but what was it? Love, which in its way is divine too. Only after this altogether new influence had made itself felt did doubts appear, making a chaos in her mind. Were his sentiments as true as she had first thought? Was it right to counterfeit goodness, even in the name of love? Was not, after all, the life of the Sisters, the life of sacrifice, more noble than the other smiling life, of which he was the emblem? Was it not a mean thing to go back from that, and all one’s high thoughts of it, to the common romance of a story-book? Might not this romance lead back again to those vulgar beaten paths out of which Agnes had supposed herself to have escaped? And, ah! was it true after all? this was the refrain which kept coming back. Was it love and not levity? Was he seeking her seriously, in honour and truth; or was it possible that he was not noble at all, seeking her only for his own amusement? These thoughts shook Agnes to the bottom of her soul. They were like convulsions passing over her, tearing her spirit asunder. She went on with her work and all her religious exercises, and nobody found