These are the titles of the three books which Eustace Thorburn selected, after having read them carefully and thoughtfully: 1. _Dion_: a Confession. 2. _Latimer’s Sister_: a Story. By Marcus Anderton. 3. _The Spectre of Walden_: a Romance. By G. G. G. Of these three, _Dion_ was the most singular; _Latimer’s Sister_ the most tender; _The Spectre_ the most poetical. Any one of these books might have exercised a powerful effect upon the mind of a sentimental woman. That they were all three written by men, and by young men, Eustace entertained no doubt. He did not, indeed, trust entirely to his own judgment; for he enlisted the services of his Uncle Dan, and induced that practised reviewer to read the three books. “All masculine work!” cried Mr. Mayfield. “No woman could have written _Latimer’s Sister_ without telling us when the young lady who figures as the heroine wore blue silk, or how lovely she looked in pink tarlatane. _The Spectre_ is a translation from the German. No Englishman would have been as simple and true to nature in his peasant-life; and I recognize untranslatable German compounds in my friend’s phraseology. The book which indicates power, and even genius, is _Dion_. I have a sort of hazy recollection of hearing that book talked about when I was a young man, and of hearing that it was written by some sprig of quality. In my opinion, Eustace, that story of _Dion_ is the kind of book to fascinate a girl.” “It is so morbid, so gloomy.” “Gloom is the very thing a girl loves, especially when it is the gloom of the storm-cloud--passion, and anguish, and so on. Depend upon it, my dear lad, _Dion_ is the book that man wrote--the book your mother was reading in the unlucky hour in which he first saw her face.” “I am inclined to believe that you are right, Uncle Dan,” Eustace answered, thoughtfully. “It is evidently the work of a scholar.” “Yes, but of a very young scholar. The learning is there, but in a crude, half-digested state. The pages bristle with fragments of old-world wisdom. The wisdom does not underlie the whole, it is not interwoven with the very fabric of the book, as in the work of a mature mind. There is passion and poetry,--a hazy kind of poetry, but with a certain fascination and grace of its own,--the poetry of a man who has never written for bread, or been troubled by uncertainties about his dinner. That parting with the girl Una is very pretty; and the dream in the ruined manor-house has a weird power. One almost feels the cold winds blowing through the windows that will not shut; one almost sees the midnight shadows of ash and poplar lying black on the moss-grown flags of the quadrangle, and all the nakedness and desolation of the place. Yes, Eustace, there is the glamour of youth and poetry upon _Dion_; I should not wonder if the man who wrote that book were the man who won your mother’s heart.”