In a woman's life this change is more common, although not so apparent as with men; because love and marriage, which cause more proportionately this change, are looked upon by them more as their natural destiny than as exceptional incidents in an otherwise even life. Marriage is the ultimate end of a woman's life, as the subsequent nursing of babies and darning of socks; with the sterner, though by no means nobler sex, it is but a new phase of existence. When the little winged god makes his appearance, therefore, and hurls one of his death-dealing darts, it is a much more serious matter for a girl than it is with us. Daphne feels it far more acutely than Apollo. With him it has been merely a pleasant little change in his life--_pour s'amuser_; but to her it is a new existence--her life, her all. She has only been in a state of pupilage before; but now she is a woman, with all a woman's hopes and fears. She has entered on the portals of the future state, when once Love's fetters have entwined themselves around her, the state for which she was born--her _ultima Thule_. For eighteen calm and happy years Lizzie's life had flowed on smoothly in the one quiet groove. She had passed from babyhood to girldom and school-age in the usual course of nature, and, until now, she had never had a deeper happiness than what a passing fancy would give, or a greater trouble than a few hours could efface. Her one great loss--the death of her mother--had occurred at so early an age that it left no lasting impression on her; and she had consequently grown up a merry little lassie, winning all hearts with her sweetly _piquante_ face and those wondrous violet eyes, whose unknown depths now laughed defiance at you, and now displayed a strange wistful languor, which irresistibly attracted you. That was until last summer; but Lizzie was very much changed now. The little laughing girl was transformed into the winning, wistful maiden, who knew now that there was more in life than eighteen summers usually dreams of. The apples of the Tree of Knowledge had been tasted, and Lizzie became aware that existence was not all lotus-eating, although it did contain, perhaps, some secret joys unknown to childhood. Everyone meets their "Fate" at some time or other; and Tom was her fate, young as they both were; perhaps, it was better that that mysterious affinity which unites us all, for a temporary or a permanent period with those especially appointed for us, should come across her early in life. It is a cup which one only sips once in a lifetime--better early perhaps than late. Do you know there is something in the Mormon doctrine after all--putting polygamy aside--in that principle of theirs that the brides of the elders or prophets are "sealed" to them. It shows a belief in the mystical and apparently predestined affinity of certain souls to one another.