"I have seen the spell working," said Mr. Dimmerly, dryly, "and am thankful that the transformation has not been of the nature that Shakespeare portrayed in his Midsummer Night Fantasy. Your head might have become turned by the wrong girl, and you have reached the period when it is bound to be turned by some one." "Uncle," he said, fervently, "she is the noblest and most beautiful being in existence." "Frank, I wish to see you," said his aunt, quietly; and he followed her to her own private sitting-room. Mr. Dimmerly indulged in his chuckling laugh as he looked after them. "Now she's going to 'stop' it, he--he--In the mean time I'll go out and stop the brook from running down hill." "The time has come," said Mrs. Marchmont to her perplexed nephew, with the complacent superiority with which the wise of this world enlighten those whose "heads are often in the clouds,"--"the time has come when I must speak plainly to you of a matter as important as it is delicate. You are my own sister's child, and I cannot see you wronged or going blindly into trouble without warning you. Are you not permitting yourself to become interested in Miss Marsden to a degree that is not wise?" "Why not wise?" he answered with burning cheeks. "Have you not realized that she is one of the most fashionable young ladies in New York, and belongs to one of the wealthiest and most fashionable families? If you could but once see her mother you would understand me." "But she herself has changed," he urged, eagerly. Mrs. Marchmont smiled incredulously and pityingly. "How little you know the world!" she said. "In what do you expect all your sentiment to end? Only sentiment? You say you purpose being a home missionary. Can you imagine for a moment that one situated as she is would contemplate such a life? Her parents would as soon bury her." Hemstead groaned under his aunt's remorseless words, but said in a sort of blind desperation: "Her parents! Is this Hindostan, that parents can treat their daughters as merchandise? A girl of Miss Marsden's force and nobility of character--" "O Frank, hush! It absolutely makes me sick to see one so easily deceived. 'Nobility of character,' indeed! Well, I didn't wish to speak of it. I could not believe it even of Lottie, but nothing less than the whole truth will convince you"; and she told him of the plot in which Lottie purposed to make him the ridiculous subject of a practical joke, and intimated that all her action since had been but the carrying out of that plot. At first Hemstead grew deathly pale, and his aunt, thinking he was going to faint, began fumbling for her salts. But a moment later the blood suffused even his neck and brow, and he said passionately, "I don't believe a word of this; Miss Marsden is not capable of such falsehood." "Whether in your unreasoning passion you will believe it or not makes no difference," said Mrs. Marchmont, quietly. "It is true, as I can prove by Addie and Miss Parton."