It is all very well for you, Monsieur Cynic, or you, Madame Artless, to say that there is no such thing as "love at first sight." Of course it is foolish, but it is not impossible; Cupid, my dear sir or madam, is a most erratic as well as _erotic_ young gentleman, and plays some strange pranks sometimes. A glance from a pair of bright eyes will some times, one glance, effect a wonderful metamorphosis in even the sternest misogynists, create a revolution, ruin an empire. Look at history, Monsieur Cynic, and answer me if you dare. Nay, my dear sir, it is not impossible, not even improbable. A single word, one look between sympathetic souls, often establishes that cordial affinity which years of intercourse, and dictionaries of words, and oceans of sighs will not create between others who have not met their mental kindred. Philosophy cannot argue against Cupidon; he laughs Plato and his platitudes to scorn. _Dixi_! I have spoken. Tom has fallen in love, and it was a clear case of love at first sight, with Lizzie Pringle just the girl he was ordained--in a non-clerical sense--to fall in love with. She was as nice a little thing as you could conceive--slim, petite, with dark brown hair nearly black, such heavenly violet eyes with liquid depths, and the most ravishing little rosebud of a mouth and piquante little nose possible for any one but a fairy to possess; she was so winning, innocent, pretty a specimen of God's gift to man, that the fact is Master Tom would have deserved being called an _eingebornen knarren_, adopting the German text for fool, if he had _not_ fallen a victim immediately to her violet eyes. And then she was dressed so bewitchingly--not in gaudy contrasts, or in the extreme of the _mode_, but so neatly and in such a ladylike manner that she must have attracted even wiser heads than his.