Seventeen years,—a long period in the annals of time, and a longer in the records of the heart;—seventeen years passed ere Edward Ellis returned to his native land. He had left it a romantic warm-hearted youth and he returned a respectable, intelligent, wealthy man. The ambition which would have led him to seek literary fame, had been expended in search of other distinctions in the world of commerce. He had become a keen observer of men and an acute student of the more sordid qualities of human nature—in a word, he had devoted his fine energies to the acquisition of wealth, and as his father predicted, he had so well availed himself of his opportunities that he was both an enlightened and rich merchant. But the romance of his early days had long since passed away. The imaginative student was concealed or rather lost in the man of the world. Thrown upon his own resources, in a foreign land, and surrounded by strangers he had learned to think and act for himself. He had acquired the worldly wisdom which enabled him to study his own interests, and it is not strange that selfishness should have mingled its alloy with his naturally amiable character. During his long sojourn abroad no claims had been made upon his affections, he had lived unloving and unloved, and the warm current of his feelings seemed gradually to have become chilled. When seen through the mist of absence, or viewed through the long vista of time, the familiar faces of his distant home, faded into vague and indistinct images. He returned to the scenes of his youth with a feeling of strangeness and the remembrances at every step of his approach were rather mournful than pleasant to his soul. Edward Ellis had been several days at home, he had fully answered all the claims filial and fraternal duty, and received the congratulations of the friends who are always found ready to note one’s good fortune, ere he bent his steps towards the dwelling of Edith Pemberton. His feelings in this as in most other things were materially altered. His early passion, like his aspirations after fame, had become but as a dream of the past, a shadow of some unattainable felicity. The hope which once made his love a source of anticipated happiness, had long since faded from his sight, and as time passed on, a tender and melancholy interest, such as one feels when regarding the youthful dead, was the only emotion which the recollection of Edith could inspire. He had outlived the affection which he had designed to be the measure of their existence. The flower had been blighted by the cold breath of worldliness, and so many sordid interests had occupied his heart since, that every trace of its beauty was lost forever. Not with a wish to revive old feelings, but from a morbid restless unsatisfied yearning towards the past, Ellis betook himself to the abode of his once loved Edith.