To the young girl, meanwhile her surroundings became Elysium. She had warm affections, of that clinging character which finds no difficulty in fastening almost anywhere if permitted time and quiet. She had little force of will and still less of that serpent wisdom which discerns the shadow of danger before that danger really approaches. She was equally good, by nature, and weak by disposition--formed of that material out of which good wives and mothers are so easily made, and which may, on the other hand, be fashioned so easily into the most melancholy semblance of lost womanhood. She was handsome, if not strictly beautiful, and the lips of her guardian, so strict to most others, told her so with smiles and low-breathed words. She was flattered by his preference, paid her deferentially in public and yet more unreservedly when none but themselves heard the words he uttered,--proud to be thus distinguished by one so attractive in appearance and unimpeachable in position,--bound to him by that obedience enjoined by her dying father, and by that strong tie of gratitude which she felt to be due to her willing and unrecompensed protector,--and brought into that close communion with his strong mind which could not fail to sway an unmeasured influence over her, by those studies in poetry, romance and philosophy which he had himself directed. It is an old story, and melancholy as old. Before she had been six months an inmate of the house of Dr. Pomeroy, Eleanor Hill loved him as madly as young, defenceless and untrained girlhood can love that which supplies its best ideal and lures it on by the most specious of pretences. Not more than that time had elapsed, when she would have plucked out her heart and laid it in his hand, had he asked it and had such an act of bodily self-sacrifice been possible. Less than a year, and the tale of her destiny was told. For weeks before, the words of her "guardian" and "father" had been such as ill became either relation, but not warmer, still, than the snared heart of the young girl craved and echoed. Then came that promise of the dearest tie on earth, which falls on the ear of loving woman with a sweeter sound than any other ever uttered under the sun or stars. He loved her--that proud, high-spirited, distinguished man, the friend of her father, and the man for whose hand (so he had told her, not boastingly but in pity, and so she had every reason to believe) the wealthiest, the most beautiful and the most arrogant belles of Broad Street and Girard Avenue had been willing to barter all their pride and all their coyness--he loved _her_, the poor young and comparatively portionless girl, held her worthy to be his wife, and was willing to share his high destiny with her!