The intensity of the craving for approbation, the love-hunger in the child's heart, would be called morbid by those who find that epithet a ready one to apply to heights and depths from which they themselves are debarred by a niggard nature. It was true (even if, like many another fact about this young creature, it is not to be approved) that she had had an affair of the heart in New York--princes apart--when she had attained the ripe age of seven. It had been a kind of infidelity to the dark-browed hero of dream, for the gentleman in question was not a nobleman, not even a Nimrod, and he had red hair. But, nevertheless, he was a peril to the peace of mind of a diminutive maid, and all unconsciously to himself "brought her acquainted with" a more thrilling joy and a more poignant pain than some women can look back upon from the height of fifty years. Oh, these strange stirrings of the too eager heart!--the sharp rapture and the sharper pain, the whimsical, bitter pathos of them read by the light of later "exultations, agonies!" Who that has had this window opened for him into the virginal chamber of awakening woman-life can look through it without tears? But this particular window is not for our eyes. After that premature romance had come to an untimely end, or, rather, when its hopelessness was comforted and covered by the quick-growing ivy of new affections, there was peace for a time in the camp of love, or only border skirmishing. Not, of course, for any lack of enterprise, or any dearth of heroes, for almost any passer in the street will serve for a peg to drape the gossamer of a dream upon. He is perhaps the unrequited lover--he is some one in disguise; not Mr. Ernest Halliwell, the son of the local doctor, but heir to an earldom over the sea. You are sorry you can never love him; he must break his heart in vain. It is almost _too_ sad, for his hair curls prettily over his ears, and his smile is gentle and haunting. But high above all these little "foot-notes," as it were, to the great main text of the romance, ran the radiant "continued story" of that one who cometh--he with swift, unfaltering feet, he with the sheltering arms--bearing the great gift in his bosom, and his face, still for a little space--still hidden.