Young William saw in young Agnes even more beauty than was beheld by others; and on those days when he felt no inclination to ride, to shoot, or to hunt, he would contrive, by some secret device, the means to meet with her alone, and give her tokens (if not of his love) at least of his admiration of her beauty, and of the pleasure he enjoyed in her company. Agnes listened, with a kind of delirious enchantment, to all her elevated and eloquent admirer uttered; and in return for his praises of her charms, and his equivocal replies in respect to his designs towards her, she gave to him her most undisguised thoughts, and her whole enraptured heart. This harmless intercourse (as she believed it) had not lasted many weeks before she loved him: she even confessed she did, every time that any unwonted mark of attention from him struck with unexpected force her infatuated senses. It has been said by a celebrated writer, upon the affection subsisting between the two sexes, "that there are many persons who, if they had never heard of the passion of love, would never have felt it." Might it not with equal truth be added, that there are many more, who, having heard of it, and believing most firmly that they feel it, are nevertheless mistaken? Neither of these cases was the lot of Agnes. She experienced the sentiment before she ever heard it named in the sense with which it had possessed her--joined with numerous other sentiments; for genuine love, however rated as the chief passion of the human heart, is but a poor dependent, a retainer upon other passions; admiration, gratitude, respect, esteem, pride in the object. Divest the boasted sensation of these, and it is not more than the impression of a twelve- month, by courtesy, or vulgar error, termed love. Agnes was formed by the rarest structure of the human frame, and destined by the tenderest thrillings of the human soul, to inspire and to experience real love: but her nice taste, her delicate thoughts, were so refined beyond the sphere of her own station in society, that nature would have produced this prodigy of attraction in vain, had not one of superior education and manners assailed her affections; and had she been accustomed to the conversation of men in William's rank of life, she had, perhaps, treated William's addresses with indifference; but, in comparing him with her familiar acquaintance, he was a miracle! His unremitting attention seemed the condescension of an elevated being, to whom she looked up with reverence, with admiration, with awe, with pride, with sense of obligation--and all those various passions which constitute true, and never-to-be-eradicated, love.