Oh, false and treacherous hopes of youth, how often do ye prove sweet poisons, which we quaff gaily to our own destruction! I once saw a curious piece of ancient sculpture, representing a child playing with a serpent, and I have often thought that the sculptor must have intended to typify the hopes of youth. Still he gazed, and smiled, and played with the paper, and fell into thought. What was it the enchantress promised him? What was the golden dream which, for the hour, possessed the palace of the soul? I know not. Woman's love belike, for he was as fair a youth to look upon as ever mortal eye beheld--exceedingly like his brother, the Earl of Gowrie, but of a lighter and a gayer aspect. Hark! There is the sound of a foot upon the short flight of steps that lead up to the turret from the large chamber below! It is not the step of her he loves. It is not hers, the giver of the gay day-dream in which he has been indulging; for see, he suddenly hides the paper, and looks towards the door with a glance of surprise if not alarm. And yet it is a woman's foot, light and soft falling; and the form that now appears at the door is surely young enough and bright enough to waken all the tenderest emotions of the heart. But no! There is a slight gesture of pettish impatience, and he exclaims, "What, Beatrice! What do you want now? Really, you tiresome girl, one cannot have a moment's time for thought." "Thought, Alex?" cried the young lady, with a laugh; "I wish to Heaven you would think, or think to some purpose. I have come to make you think if I can. Nay, nay, no signs of impatience, for I intend to lecture you; and you must both hear and consider what I have to say. Though I be a year younger, yet I am older in court and experience than you are. Oh, if you get up that way I shall lock the door;" and she did as she threatened, adding, "What do you laugh at?" "At your sauciness, silly girl," answered Alexander Ruthven. "Where should you get experience, and what right have you to assume all the airs of sage old age?" "I got my experience in this court," answered Beatrice, "where I have been for eighteen months, and you but three; and as for age, Alex, a woman of eighteen is as old as a man of four or five-and-twenty. So now sit you down there, like a good boy, and listen to what I am going to say to you." Alexander Ruthven cast himself down in the seat again, with an air in which a certain affectation of scornful merriment overlaid, but could not conceal altogether, an expression of irritable mortification. "Well," he said, "here I am. Pray to what do your sage counsels tend, sister of mine?" "They tend to your happiness, your safety, your honour, Alex," answered the Lady Beatrice, a little sharply, for though she had come with the kindest as well as highest purposes, her brother's tone hurt her. "Now, gad's my life!" replied Alexander Ruthven, "I do believe that no man upon earth would suppose this to be the gay, bird-hearted Beatrice Ruthven."