"Are you sure you are not peeping between the stems of the feathers?" said Sunderland. "Well, then, now for my confession; but listen to it 'more in sorrow than in anger,' and remember that the album alone was the cause of my desperation and my dishonour. Some Mephistopheles whispered in my ear to look among the older poets for something but little known, and transfer it as mine to a page in the fatal book. I would not, of course, venture on Scott or Moore or Byron; for though I doubted whether my lady-love was better versed in _them_ than in the bards of Queen Anne's reign, yet I thought that perhaps some of the readers of her album might be acquainted with the last and best of the minstrels. But on looking over a volume of Pope, I found his 'Song by a Person of Quality.'" "I recollect it," said Orinda; "it is a satire on the amateur love-verses of that period,--such as were generally produced by fashionable inamoratoes. In these stanzas the author has purposely avoided every approach to sense or connexion, but has assembled together a medley of smooth and euphonous sounds. And could you risk such verses with your Dulcinea?" "Yes," replied Sunderland; "with _her_ I knew that I was perfectly safe, and that she would pronounce them sweet and delightful. And in short, that they would exactly suit the calibre of her understanding." "Yet still," said Orinda, "with such an opinion of her mental qualifications, you professed to love this young lady--or rather you really loved her--no doubt you did." "No, no," replied Sunderland, eagerly; "it was only a passing whim--only a boyish fancy--such as a man may feel a dozen times before he is five-and-twenty, and before he is seriously in love. I should have told you that at this period I had not yet arrived at years of discretion." "I should have guessed it without your telling," said Orinda, mischievously. The young officer smiled, and proceeded. "I now saw my way clear. So I made a new pen, placed Pope on my desk, and sitting down to the album with a lightened spirit, I began with the first stanza of his poem: 'Fluttering spread thy purple pinions, Gentle Cupid, o'er my heart-- I a slave in thy dominions, Nature must give way to art.' And I then added the second and sixth verses, substituting the name of my fair one for that of Aurelia." "What would I not give to know that name!" thought Orinda. "But, in those verses," she remarked to Sunderland, "if I recollect aright, there is no direct compliment to the lady's beauty."