Dalton with a party of friends, his sister among them, is journeying to the north. A hope of meeting them--scarce acknowledged as an intention--spurs you on. The eye rests dreamily and vaguely on the beauties that appear at every turn: they are beauties that charm you, and charm you the more by an indefinable association with that fairy object that floats before you, half unknown, and wholly unclaimed. The quiet towns with their noonday stillness, the out-lying mansions with their stately splendor, the bustling cities with their mocking din, and the long reaches of silent and wooded shore, chime with their several beauties to your heart, in keeping with the master-key that was touched long weeks before. The cool, honest advices of the father drift across your memory in shadowy forms, as you wander through the streets of the first northern cities; and all the need for observation, and the incentives to purpose, which your ambitious designs would once have quickened, fade dismally when you find that _she_ is not there. All the lax gayety of Saratoga palls on the appetite; even the magnificent shores of Lake George, though stirring your spirit to an insensible wonder and love, do not cheat you into a trance that lingers. In vain the sun blazons every isle, and lights every shaded cove, and at evening stretches the Black Mountain in giant slumber on the waters. Your thought bounds away from the beauty of sky and lake, and fastens upon the ideal which your dreamy humors cherish. The very glow of pursuit heightens your fervor,--a fervor that dims sadly the new-wakened memories of home. The southern gates of Champlain, those fir-draped Trosachs of America, are passed, and you find yourself, upon a golden evening of Canadian autumn, in the quaint old city of Montreal. Dalton with his party has gone down to Quebec. He is to return within a few days on his way to Niagara. There is a letter from Nelly awaiting you. It says:--"Mother is much more feeble: she often speaks of your return in a way that I am sure, if you heard, Clarence, would bring you back to us soon." There is a struggle in your mind: old affection is weaker than young pride and hope. Moreover, the world is to be faced; the new scenes around you are to be studied. An answer is penned full of kind remembrances, and begging a few days of delay. You wander, wondering, under the quaint old houses, and wishing for the return of Dalton. He meets you with that happy, careless way of his,--the dangerous way which some men are born to, and which chimes easily to every tone of the world,--a way you wondered at once; a way you admire now; and a way that you will distrust as you come to see more of men. Miss Dalton--(it seems sacrilege to call her Laura)--is the same elegant being that entranced you first.