didn't want to think of love yet; but they have set me thinking, and now I am always dreaming of the sort of man I should like. If there be heroes in the world I should like to find one--such a one as I _could_ love, tall, handsome, dark, dark! Yes, dark raven hair, and Spanish eyes, pale and thoughtful, especially"----Here the soliloquy was disturbed by a shrill voice beneath the window, calling upwards from the garden, "Minnie, Minnie, child!" "That's aunt Sylvia," said the soliloquist quietly. "I will not answer, for if I do, I know she will want to go for a ramble somewhere, and we shall assuredly meet the lawyer." The voice below continued its summons, but in the distance; the caller evidently was seeking through the garden. "I wonder when my cousin Dora will come," said the Minnie of Sylvia's seeking again. "And I wonder if she is _very_ handsome; they say so:--though only three years older than myself, I was always afraid of her, even as a child. She was so tall and commanding, though but a girl of fifteen then--now she's twenty; and she looked so stern, with her proud curling lip which never smiled; even at play, her play was queenly and condescending. I see her now, when she was at her gymnastic exercises; how graceful she looked flinging upwards the hoop, which always returned unerringly to the stick, as if it durst not disobey her will. _Mine_ often rebelled, and fell yards off; and, whilst I put myself in a fever to catch it, _she_ was calm and pale, and if she involuntarily sprang upwards to meet it, with what a calm grace she lighted on the toe of one of her tiny feet with the obedient toy in her keeping! There was pride even in that action, for her foot seemed to disdain the earth. It was the only thing I disliked in Dora, her pride as a child; it awed me. I hope it will not do so now. I want to love her. We cannot love where we fear, and I hope she will love me whenever she comes; and yet I feel so nervous at the thought of seeing her, though"----Here another voice arose on the ear; this, too, came from the garden. "Minnie, Minnie; where are you, Minnie?" it said. "That's my uncle Juvenal," whispered the girl, peeping through the window, with its antique panes and narrow casement, "and he's not alone. I guessed as much. How he _can_ like Marmaduke Burton, _the_ squire, I cannot imagine." "Minnie," cried a soft voice, evidently in the direction of the great hall clock, "are you up-stairs, dear?"