"She is innately noble," he said one day to Lady Vaughan. "She is sure always to choose the nobler and better part; her ideas are naturally noble, pure, and correct. She is the most beautiful combination of child and woman that I have ever met. Imagination and common sense, poetry, idealisms and reason, all seem to meet in her." Years ago, Adrian Darcy had heard something of Lady Vaughan's half-expressed wish that he should marry her granddaughter. He laughed at it at the time; but he remembered it with a sense of acute pleasure. His had been a busy life; he had studied hard--had carried off some of the brightest honors of his college--and, after leaving Oxford, had devoted himself to literary pursuits. He had written books which had caused him to be pronounced one of the most learned scholars in England. He cared little for the frivolities of fashion--they had not interested him in the least--yet his name was a tower of strength in the great world. Between Adrian Darcy and the ancient Barony of Chandon there was but the present Lord Chandon, an old infirm man, and his son, a sickly boy. People all agreed that sooner or later Adrian must succeed to the estate; great, therefore, was the welcome he received in Vanity Fair. Mothers presented their fairest daughters to him; fair-faced girls smiled their sweetest smiles when he was present; but all was in vain--the world and the worldly did not please Adrian Darcy. He cared more for his books than woman's looks; he had never felt the least inclination to fall in love until he met Hyacinth Vaughan. It was not her beauty that charmed him, although he admitted that it was greater than he had ever seen. It was her youth, her simplicity, her freedom from all affectation, the entire absence of all worldliness, the charm of her fresh, sweet romance, that delighted him. She said what she thought, and she expressed her thoughts in such beautiful, eloquent words that he delighted to listen to them. He was quite unused to such frank, sweet, candid simplicity--it had all the charms of novelty for him. He had owned to himself, at last, that he loved her--that life without her would be a dreary blank. "If I had never met her," he said to himself, "I should never have loved anyone. In all the wide world she is the only one for me." He wondered whether he could speak to her yet of his love. "She is like some shy, bright bird," he said to himself, "and I am afraid of startling her. She is so simple, so child-like, in spite of her romance and poetry, that I am half afraid." His manner to her was so chivalrous that it was like the wooing of some gracious king. She contrasted him over and over again with Claude--Claude, who had respected her girlish ignorance and inexperience so little. So the sunny days glided by in a dream of delight. Adrian spent all his time with them; and one day Lady Vaughan asked him what he thought of his chance of succeeding to the Barony of Chandon.