The rector I found to be a stout, portly gentleman, whose years already reached to between sixty and seventy. So many winters, although they had plentifully besprinkled his hair with gray, shone out with ruddy brightness in his still handsome face, and keen, kindly, bright-hazel eyes; and his voice, hearty and ringing, had not as yet one quaver of age in it. I met him at breakfast on the morning after my arrival, and his reception of me was most friendly. We had spoken together but for a few minutes, when one of the French windows, that led from the breakfast-room into a shrubbery and flower-garden, gently opened and admitted a lady, just then, as I afterward learned, in her nineteenth spring. I use this term almost unconsciously, for I can not even now, in the glowing summer of her life, dissociate her image from that season of youth and joyousness. She was introduced to me, with old-fashioned simplicity, as "My grand-daughter, Agnes Townley." It is difficult to look at beauty through other men's eyes, and, in the present instance, I feel that I should fail miserably in the endeavor to stamp upon this blank, dead paper, any adequate idea of the fresh loveliness, the rose-bud beauty of that young girl. I will merely say, that her perfectly Grecian head, wreathed with wavy _bandeaux_ of bright hair, undulating with golden light, vividly brought to my mind Raphael's halo-tinted portraitures of the Virgin--with this difference, that in place of the holy calm and resignation of the painting, there was in Agnes Townley, a sparkling youth and life, that even amid the heat and glare of a crowded ball-room, or of a theatre, irresistibly suggested and recalled the freshness and perfume of the morning--of a cloudless, rosy morning of May. And, far higher charm than feature-beauty, however exquisite, a sweetness of disposition, a kind gentleness of mind and temper, was evinced in every line of her face, in every accent of the low-pitched, silver voice, that breathed through lips made only to smile. Let me own, that I was greatly struck by so remarkable a combination of rare endowments; and this, I think, the sharp-eyed rector must have perceived, or he might not, perhaps, have been so immediately communicative with respect to the near prospects of his idolized grand-child, as he was the moment the young lady, after presiding at the breakfast-table, had withdrawn. "We shall have gay doings, Mr. Tyrrel, at the rectory shortly," he said. "Next Monday three weeks will, with the blessing of God, be Agnes Townley's wedding-day." "Wedding-day!" "Yes," rejoined the rector, turning toward and examining some flowers which Miss Townley had brought in and placed on the table. "Yes, it has been for some time settled that Agnes shall on that day be united in holy wedlock to Mr. Arbuthnot." "Mr. Arbuthnot, of Elm Park?"