Abby Rock told me, Melody,--in after-times, when we were much together,--how my poor father, at sight of my mother Marie, was struck with love as by a lightning-flash. It was a possession, she would say, only by an angel instead of an evil spirit; at the first look, she filled his life, and while she lived he wanted nothing else, nor indeed after she died. It was not so with me. And perhaps it might seem strange to some, my dear child, that I write this story of my heart for you, who are still a slip of a growing girl, and far yet from womanhood and the thoughts that come with it. But it may be some years before the paper comes to you, for except my poor father, we are a long-lived race; and I find singular comfort, now that I cannot keep myself exercised as much as formerly, by reason of growing years, in this writing. And I trust to say nothing that you may not with propriety hear, my dear. When I had been a month at Chateau Claire, then, a new thing began to come slowly upon me. From the first I had felt that this young lady was the fairest and the sweetest creature my eyes had seen; like a drop of morning dew on a rose, nothing less. I dwelt upon the grace of her motions, and the way the colour melted in her cheek, as I would dwell upon the fairest picture; and I listened to her voice because it was sweeter than my violin, or even the note of the hermit-thrush. But slowly I became aware of a change; and instead of merely the pleasure of eye and ear, and the warmth at the heart that comes from true kindliness and friendship, there would fall a trembling on me when she came or went, and a sense of the room being empty when she was not in it. When she was by, I wanted nothing more, or so it seemed, but just the knowledge of it, and did not even need to look at her to see how the light took her hair where it waved above her ear. This I take to have been partly because the feeling that was growing up in me came not from her beauty, or in small part only from that, but rather from my learning the truth and purity and nobleness of her nature; and this knowledge did not require the pleasure of the eyes. I thought no harm of all this; I took the joy as part of all the new world that was so bright about me; if voices spoke low within me, telling of the other life overseas, which was my own, while this was but a fairy dream,--I would not listen, or bade my heart speak louder and drown them. My mind had little, or say rather, my reason had little to do in those days; till it woke with a start, if I may say so, one night. It was a July night, hot and close. We were all sitting on the stone terrace for coolness, though there was little enough anywhere. I had been playing, and we had all three sung, as we loved to do. There was a song of a maiden who fell asleep by the wayside, and three knights came riding by,--a pretty song it was, and sung in three parts, the treble carrying the air, the tenor high above it, and the bass making the accompaniment.