“Poor heart, how vain thy dream! As easy would it seem In winter time dead summer to recall, As in life’s autumn days Retracing youthful ways For him on whom life’s length’ning shadows fall!” “Too true,” he murmured, sadly. “It would almost seem as if the girl wrote with a subtle prescience of this day. How strange the charm she has always had for me, even in her sweet childhood. She loved me then, too, but now I am too old. Sweetheart can not be more than eighteen, while I am thirty-five! Why should I dream of rivaling Cameron Bentley, who has youth, wealth, and good looks to recommend him to her favor?” It was the first time that he had ever regretted the swift passage of the years that had changed him from an ardent, impetuous boy into a dreamy, thoughtful man. Now he realized in all its intensity the poet’s plaint: “There are gains for all our losses, There are balms for all our pains; But when youth, the dream, departs, It takes something from our hearts, And it never comes again.” “Ah, to be a boy again--to be a boy that I might dare to woo her for my own!” he sighed; and at length his passion drove him to Orange Grove, that he might see for himself how Cameron Bentley’s wooing sped. He found Cameron, metaphorically, at her feet. She had other lovers, too, this dainty young ward of his. Half a score of young men staying at the house were ready to murder one another for her fair sake; but with wonderful cleverness she distributed her smiles impartially among them all, causing one jealous damsel to quote: “Sister she’ll be to them all, and Loving and faithful and true; Rather inclined round her fingers to wind About--say, a dozen or two.” “I don’t think she means to flirt with anybody. See how she tries to be the same with all,” Nell Bentley replied, valiantly taking her favorite’s part; but she only got a shrug of the shoulders from the malicious New York belle.