often bring together hearts which habit afterward keeps united. Few, very few, create an ideal in their youth and see it substantialize into a reality as life goes on. Still fewer of those men who are capable of real love ever bestow its treasures upon one who can appreciate them. I think I have never known a single instance of such an attachment being reciprocated and rewarded.” “Did you ever know more than one man who possessed this faculty of loving, uncle?” “In the course of my long life I have known _three_; and if you choose I will tell you the history of one of these, to prove my theory. “Among my earliest school friends and playmates were Edgar and Herbert Darsie. They were twin-brothers, the only children of a widow, whom I remember as a tall, pale lady in close mourning, which she never laid aside till the day of her death. There was little of that resemblance between the twins which generally makes the pleasant puzzle of mothers and nurses in similar cases; for, though alike in feature and height, and even in their peculiarity of gait and manner, yet Edgar had the fair complexion, blue eyes, and light silken hair of his mother; while Herbert’s olive complexion, dark eyes, and curling black locks betrayed the French blood which he derived from his father. They were cheerful, happy-tempered boys, and possessed a certain natural sweetness of manner, which made them universal favorites with old and young. Their mother lived in the retired but handsome style which, in those days, was considered the proper mode of showing respect for the memory of a husband. She kept up the establishment exactly as it had been during Mr. Darsie’s life, and seemed to find her only pleasure in doing precisely as he would have wished. She was apparently in the enjoyment of a handsome income, kept her carriage, and had a number of servants, while the house and grounds exhibited taste as well as no stint of expense.