While in this state of mental uncertainty, Mr. Lupton had taken an opportunity of introducing him to the acquaintance of one Mr. Henry Calvert, a gentleman of comfortable, though not large, fortune, residing in one of the northern suburbs of London, and in whose family he soon found,--as his father had secretly desired,--a companion very much after the heart of any young man of true sense and sensibility. This was in the person of Jane Calvert, the youngest of two sisters, and a lady within a year or two of his own age. Well-educated, sensible, and good-tempered, she was one of those creatures who, as they grow up to womanhood, and all its nameless witcheries, become unconsciously, as it were, the life and light of the household;--to whom parents, brothers, and sisters,--all instinctively and unknown, perhaps, to themselves,--look up as the soul of the family;--whom all love--none envy; whose presence, in a manner, makes glad, none know why; as the spring delights us unthought on, or the flowers by our way-side inspire pleasure and gratification even when least we know whence our elasticity of spirit is derived. She was one of those happy beings--the heart, as it were, of the domestic circle--that would be most missed if taken away; that would leave the longest empty place in the bosoms of those who had surrounded her; but who, in many things, was least felt while present, save in the quiet and gentle sense of unobtrusive happiness which her presence ever occasioned. Such was the character of the young lady with whom it may now be said Colin was indeed in love. Below him in height, she yet was sufficiently tall to give dignity to an elegant figure; while a light and brilliant complexion, associated, as it usually is, with hair and eyes of a hue which the pencil of nature colours in admirable correspondence, but which in words can scarcely be properly described, gave no fairer a representation exteriorly than the jewel of a soul within most amply deserved. On the other hand, Jane, who had seen Colin at her father's house but on few occasions before, now, for the first time in her existence, became conscious that, happy as she was, she might be yet happier in a sphere of which hitherto she had thought nothing, and under circumstances which, even when alone, she scarcely suffered herself to contemplate. Up to this time she had never dreamed of love beyond the circle of her own family: now she felt that loveable and good creatures exist beyond in the wide world, whom to see is to remember, and to remember is to regret their absence. She found that the heart is capable of other love than that of parents, sisters, and brothers: and not capable only, but that such may become too deeply necessary to its happiness, ever again--after once making that discovery--to be truly happy without it.