It was, perhaps, an hour or two after noon, and the early dinner of the time was already over, when the two sisters strolled out into the gardens, unaccompanied, except by a tall old greyhound, Blanche's peculiar friend and guardian, and some two or three beautiful silky-haired King Charles spaniels. After loitering for a little while among the trim parterres, and box-edged terraces, and gathering a few sweet summer flowers, they turned to avoid the heat, which was excessive, into the dark elm avenue, and wandered along between the tall black yew hedges, linked arm-in-arm, indeed, but both silent and abstracted, and neither of them conscious of the rich melancholy music of the nightingales, which was ringing all around them in that pleasant solitude. Both, indeed, were buried in deep thought; and each, perhaps, for the first time in her life, felt that her thought was such that she could not, dared not, communicate it to her sister. For Blanche Fitz-Henry had, on the previous night, began, for the first time in her life, to suspect that she was the owner, for the time being, of a commodity called a heart, although it may be that the very suspicion proved in some degree that the possession was about to pass, if it were not already passing, from her. In sober seriousness, it must be confessed that the young cornet of the Life Guards, although he had made so little impression on her to whom he had devoted his attentions, had produced an effect different from any thing which she had ever fell before on the mind of the elder sister. It was not his good mien, nor his noble air that had struck her; for though he was a well-made, fine-looking man, of graceful manners, and high-born carriage, there were twenty men in the room with whom he could not for five minutes have sustained a comparison in point of personal appearance. His friend, the Viscount St. George, to whom she had lent but a cold ear, was a far handsomer man. Nor was it his wit and gay humor, and easy flow of conversation, that had captivated her fancy; although she certainly did think him the most agreeable man she had ever listened to. No, it was the under-current of delicate and poetical thought, the glimpses of a high and noble spirit, which flashed out at times through the light veil of reckless merriment, which, partly in compliance with the spirit of the day, and partly because his was a gay and mirthful nature, he had superinduced over the deeper and grander points of his character. No; it was a certain originality of mind, which assured her that, though he might talk lightly, he was one to feel fervently and deeply--it was the impress of truth, and candor, and high independence, which was stamped on his every word and action, that first riveted her attention, and, in spite of her resistance, half fascinated her imagination.