'I was visiting a friend who had married the head-master of one of our principal grammar schools. Amongst his tutors there was a young man of whom he was very fond, and who used to be a good deal with his family after the duties of the day were over. It is just possible that he was a countryman of yours, for his name was Jones.' 'Oh, Serena! you don't mean to say that you fell in love with a Jones in England, and then came into Wales to be in the midst of that very ancient and numerous family.' 'I have not come to the love part yet, Freda. He was a very quiet and unobtrusive person, but, my friends said, very amiable and sufficiently clever. I know that I used to take an unkind delight in teasing him, and that he was rather clever in repartee, and never spared me in return. I liked him as an amusing companion, and had no objection to his getting me books or flowers, or whatever lay within his reach that might be agreeable to me. Moreover, I pitied him, because I was told that both his parents were dead, and that he was working hard to pay for his own course at college, whither he intended to go as soon as he could get the means. 'As my father was with his regiment abroad at this time, and my mother and sister were making a round of visits amongst our Scotch friends, I stayed a long time with the Merryweathers. They were very pleasant people, and had an agreeable circle of acquaintance. 'But that has nothing to do with my story. The evening before I left them to return home, my friend, Mr Jones, managed to be alone with me; how, I never found out, for he ought to have been with the boys--and committed a similar misdemeanour to that of poor Rowland Prothero. He had unfortunately lost his heart to me--so he said, and was constrained to tell me so. Would I think of him, if, in the course of time, he could enter the church and marry me? 'Now I had the world before me, a happy home, a prospect of a certain independence, and, I suppose, a sufficient share of personal attractions. I had never considered whether I could like this young man or not; but I had well considered that when I married, I must have talent, position, personal beauty, and a hundred other visionary attributes in my husband. I was of a most imaginative, and at the same time, ambitious temperament; and on the one hand, thought a great poet or warrior would fall to my lot, and on the other, that a prince of the blood royal was not too good for me. 'Your pride, my dear Freda, is too matter-of-fact, as is your general character, thoroughly to understand me. At that time I was touched and flattered by the devotion of this young man, and felt, that had he been differently placed, and had he more of the attributes either of station or romance about him, I might have taken him under my august consideration; but as I had never even looked upon him in the light of a lover, or supposed it possible that he could be one, I at once, and decidedly refused him.