Like all the fancies of a young and pure-hearted girl, they would have been indefinite and dream-like, fading away ere their outlines were accurately determined, like the frost-work landscapes on a window-pane. But now there was form and coloring to all such visions. The image of that pale intellectual being, full of genius and morbid feeling, aspiring after immortality, yet pining over mere physical defects, was ever present with her. She thought over all their past interviews, and words which seemed meaningless when first uttered, now were of deep import when repeated by the magical voice of memory. She recalled his looks, and the glance which then only spoke a love for the beautiful in nature, now, when reflected from the mirror of fancy, was fraught with earnest tenderness. The consequence of such pernicious day dreaming may be easily imagined. She persuaded herself into the belief that she was beloved, and, at fifteen, Hester Ormesby was already the passionate, the tender, the loving woman. Reader, do you doubt the possibility of such rapid development of the affections? Ask any imaginative, warm-hearted, truth-loving woman, if, amid the arcana of her past emotions, some remnants of such a girlish passion do not yet exist. During several years Hester was confined to Miss Templeton’s sick room, and, though occasionally receiving visits and letters from her family, she heard nothing of Legard, excepting that he had departed for Italy. Perhaps the knowledge of his absence tended to reconcile her to the close seclusion in which she now lived, and, with a degree of imprudence perfectly natural to such a character, she treasured up every thing which could feed her romantic passion. A book which his pencil had marked—a plant which he had admired—a melody which he had praised—even the color of a ribbon which he had once approved, were objects of remembered interest to her. She delighted to think of him as roaming through the galleries of ancient art, drinking deep draughts of beauty from the antique fountains of classic taste, and winning, leaf by leaf, the laurel bough which had been the object of his vain longing. Of the future—of his return and its probable results to herself, she never thought. Nothing is so purely unselfish as true love; it asks every thing for its object, but nothing for itself; and she who finds matrimonial calculations mingling with the early emotions of her heart, may make a notable managing and useful creature, but cannot lay claim to the character of a true, devoted, self-forgetting woman.