not till after a long course of reflection that her image came up before him; but when once it did come, it was master of the scene. How he recalled all her winning ways, her siren voice, her ready wit, her easy, graceful motion, her playful manner, that gave to her beauty so many new phases of attraction! What a fascination was it that in her company he never remembered a sorrow,--nay, to think of her was the best solace he had ever found against the pain of gloomy reveries. She was never out of humour, never out of spirits,--always brilliant, sparkling, and happy-minded. What a glorious thing to obtain a share of such a nature,--the very next best thing to having it oneself! “But all this was not Love,” breaks in my impatient reader. Very true; I admit it in all humility. It was not what you, nor perhaps I, would call by that name; but yet it was all that Annesley Beecher had to offer in that regard. Have you never remarked the strange and curious efforts made by men who have long lived on narrow fortunes to acquit themselves respectably on succeeding to larger means? They know well enough that they need not pinch and screw and squeeze any longer,--that fortune has enlarged her boundaries, and that they can enter into wider, richer, and pleasanter pasturage,--and yet, for the life of them, they cannot make the venture! or if they do, it is with a sort of convulsive, spasmodic effort far more painful than pleasurable. Their old instincts press heavily upon them, and bear down all the promptings of their present prosperity; they really do not want all these bounties of fate,--they are half crashed by the shower of blessings. So is it precisely with your selfish man in his endeavors to expand into affection, and so was it with Beecher when he tried to be a lover.