Let not the reader marvel. There are certainly such things occasionally as love at first sight, but with him it was very different. If the eye which runs over these lines saw the sun rise as often as mine does--I see him open the curtains of the night, I believe, more frequently than any man in England, more frequently even than the matutinal labourer of the fields--if any reader, I say, saw the sun rise as often as I do, he would understand the whole process of Henry's love in a moment. Not that it had anything to do with sunrise, or with sunset, or with the rising, southing, and setting of the moon; but there is a certain comfortable arrangement which every early riser practises, or should practise, in the winter, and which perfectly explains Henry Hayley's case. You direct the housemaid to take a bundle of dry sticks--called in some places a fagot, in other parts of the country a bavin: in London men use square bits of deal--and, laying them artistically, with sufficient spaces between them to allow the air to pass, to place over them a mass or quantity of paper: such a manuscript as this would do very well, but a newspaper is better, for a thousand to one it contains more inflammable materials. Over all you superinduce a thin and pervious stratum of bituminous coal; and then in the morning, when you rise, you put a candle (lighted) to the paper, and the whole mass is in a blaze in a moment. Now, in Henry Hayley's case, Fate had been the housemaid; the friendships and affections of youth, piled one above the other, had been the wood nicely laid. The paper might perhaps be represented by all the longing, eager memories and fancies of and regarding the fair companion of his youth during the last long ten years; a warm, earnest, ardent heart was the inflammable coal at the top; and the sudden sight, and tender interest, and kindly affection of Maria were the light which kindled the flame in a moment. He had, in short, met her that night, loving her very much; and he left her, loving her as much as it is possible for man to love. He went through the park, then, with the spirit of the past and the present on either hand, leading him through paths of fairy flowers to scenes of imaginary happiness. Ah! that quarter of an hour was well worth the ten years of suffering. He could hardly make up his mind to pass the gates; but there was no use in lingering, and he sped on. Such a frugal dinner as he wanted was easily obtained at the little public-house--for it did not deserve the name of an inn; and when it was over, he still sat for a time and thought of Maria--not of Lady Anne--till his watch, which he had laid on the table, showed him that it was time to depart for his next visit. Then, indeed, he turned his mind to her whom he was so soon to see; but still Henry Hayley was a gentleman--not in manners alone, but in heart and mind--and a gentleman never misunderstands a woman.