He was at that age in man when love partakes very strongly of the imaginative, and clothes the object of affection with an excellence and perfection which, though it be not always just, makes her whom he loves to him a _beau ideal._ Almost every youth creates in his mind a standard of perfect loveliness, and if he, perchance, meets with a face which presents some resemblance to the mental image he has formed, he at once proceeds to invest it with all the charms with which he has endowed the unreal. The maid is elected to the first place in his heart--she becomes his guiding influence--he busies himself by contemplating schemes of impossible delights for her, is anxious to be at her side whenever apart, and most loth, when with her, to tear himself from her. No doubt a very considerable amount of mental deception is practised during this phase of youthful existence, and when marriage has bestowed upon the lovesick swain the object he has so ardently coveted, he perhaps finds that he has been gazing through, what he now considers, the wrong end of the telescope. Harry Vivian was, however, like all youths of his age, in no condition to believe that the being he had made his representative angel could ever prove the reverse. He had always seen her mild and gentle, soft in manner, courteous in speech, amiable in expression, and exquisitely lovely in person. He could suppose no other side to the picture, and so, as she outwardly resembled an angel, he gave her credit for being inwardly a saint. His intimacy with her was slight, his opportunities of seeing her--save during the past year, when he had made them--had not been many; he had interchanged but few words with her, and they were of a very commonplace description. He had not hitherto thought of her, more than that she was a girl of rare and delicate beauty, whose features he should like to reproduce in some of the choice modellings of the precious metals entrusted to him, for it seemed to him that no artist, however marvellous his skill in delineating the female face divine, had ever succeeded in producing one so beautiful as her’s. Love had, however, taken no part in this admiration; he had gazed upon her and thought of her as he would have done of the best efforts of the greatest masters of art--“a thing of beauty,” but animated with life. Her sudden appearance at the window, the golden sunbeams falling on her face, her hair, her light dress, bringing her beauty out in strong relief from the dark chamber in which she stood, altered at one stroke the condition of his feelings. Passion sprang into life simultaneously with the glance he turned upon her--it intermingled with his admiration, and became love.