He saw her, at a nearer view, A spirit, yet a woman too. WORDSWORTH. When Jasper St. Aubyn opened his eyes, dim with the struggle of returning consciousness and life, they met a pair of eyes fixed with an expression of the most earnest anxiety on his own—a pair of eyes, the loveliest into which he ever had yet gazed, large, dark, unfathomably deep, and soft withal and tender, as the day-dream of a love-sick poet. He could not mark their color; he scarce knew whether they were mortal eyes, whether they were realities at all, so sickly did his brain reel, and so confused and wandering were his fancies. Then a sweet low voice fell upon his ear, in tones the gentlest, yet the gladdest, that ever he had heard, exclaiming— “Oh! father, father, he lives—he is saved!” But he heard, saw, no more; for again he relapsed into unconsciousness, and felt nothing further, until he became sensible of a balmy coolness on his brow, a pleasant flavor on his parched lips, and a kindly glow creeping as it were through all his limbs, and gradually expanding into life. Again his eyes were unclosed, and again they met the earnest, hopeful gaze of those other eyes, which he now might perceive belonging to a face so exquisite, and a form so lovely, as to be worthy of those great glorious wells of lustrous tenderness. It was a young girl who bent over him, perhaps a few months older than himself, so beautiful that had she appeared suddenly, even in her simple garb, which seemed to announce her but one degree above the peasants of the neighborhood, in the midst of the noblest and most aristocratical assembly, she would have become on the instant the cynosure of all eyes, and the magnet of all hearts. Of that age when the heart, yet unsunned by passion, and unused to strong emotion, thrills sensibly to every feeling awakened for the first time within it, and bounds at every appeal to its sympathies; when the ingenuous countenance, unhardened by the sad knowledge of the world, and untaught to conceal one emotion, reflects like a perfect mirror every gleam of sunshine that illuminates, every passing cloud that over-shadows its pure and spotless surface, the maiden sought not to hide her delight, as she witnessed the hue of life return to his pale cheeks, and the spark of intelligence relume his handsome features. A bright mirthful glance, which told how radiant they might be in moments of unmingled bliss, laughed for an instant in those deep blue eyes, and a soft, sunny smile played over her warm lips; but the next minute, she dropped the young man’s hand, which she had been chafing between both her own, buried her face in her palms, and wept those sweet and happy tears which flow only from innocent hearts, at the call of gratitude and sympathy.