Ethel's heart had been filled by her father; and all affection, all interest, borrowed their force from his memory. She did not think of love; and while Villiers was growing into a part of her life, becoming knit to her existence by daily habit, and a thousand thoughts expended on him, she entertained his idea chiefly as having been the friend of Lodore. "He is certainly the kindest-hearted creature in the world." This was the third time that, when laying her gentle head on the pillow, this feeling came like a blessing to her closing eyes. She heard his voice in the silence of night, even more distinctly than when it was addressed to her outward sense during the day. For the first time after the lapse of months, she found one to whom she could spontaneously utter every thought, as it rose in her mind. A fond, elder brother, if such ever existed, cherishing the confidence and tenderness of a beloved sister, might fill the place which her new friend assumed for Ethel. She thought of him with overflowing affection; and the name of "Mr. Villiers" sometimes fell from her lips in solitude, and hung upon her ear like sweetest music. In early life there is a moment--perhaps of all the enchantments of love it is the one which is never renewed--when passion, unacknowledged to ourselves, imparts greater delight than any after-stage of that ever-progressive sentiment. We neither wish nor expect. A new joy has risen, like the sun, upon our lives; and we rejoice in the radiance of morning, without adverting to the noon and twilight that is to follow. Ethel stood on the threshold of womanhood: the door of life had been closed before her;--again it was thrown open--and the sudden splendour that manifested itself blinded her to the forms of the objects of menace or injury, which a more experienced eye would have discerned within the brightness of her new-found day.