Courage, however, was the last quality in which, on this particular morning, young Purcell could be said to excel. To devote your life in secret to a beloved object; to dream of her night and day; to make impassioned resolutions, and determine to win glory and wealth for her, is not so hard for a fanciful youth; but to go into her presence, look into the face that dazzles you--confront the goddess of your distant worship, and without any preliminaries to lead up to this great step, and prepare her for it, quite off-hand and impromptu ask her to marry you! This is a very different matter. The young man sat alone and tried to eat his breakfast, trembling to think of what was before him. The circumstances were such as to add tenfold to the natural tremors of such a crisis. She was a lady, and far above him--not rich indeed, nor occupying any very exalted position in reality--but her dignity was very imposing to the young man, who had always recognised this grace of what seemed to him rank, as one of her particular charms. Purcell was painfully aware that he himself had no right to the name of gentleman. Many a less worthy claimant has borne it, with no thought that it was inappropriate, and Purcell had anxiously and painfully endeavoured to acquire all its outside appearances. He knew, as well as any, how to behave himself in society, and passed muster very well among other young men. He was a little over-anxious, perhaps, a little too fine in his language, too deferential and polite, not sufficiently at his ease, to get much enjoyment out of his social experiences; but this was a fault on the right side. Notwithstanding his modest sense of his own “merits,” Purcell could not persuade himself that he was Lottie’s equal. He knew he was not her equal. She had been as a star to him, far away and out of reach--and though in the fervour of imaginative passion the hope of winning her had seemed like heaven, yet the actual enterprise of wooing her, when brought thus close, seemed very appalling indeed--a quest more dangerous and alarming than ever knight errant set forth upon. His knees knocked together, great beads of moisture came upon his forehead--how was he to do it? how was he to present himself, to explain the hopes which, looked at thus in cold blood, appeared even to himself impossible, not to say presumptuous in the highest degree? How was he ever, he asked himself, to make her aware what he meant? She would not understand him. She would think he meant something else, anything else--rather than that he, a poor musician, the son of the Signor’s house-keeper, wanted to MARRY her, the daughter of a gentleman. It would be impossible to make her understand him. This seemed the first difficulty of all, and it was an appalling one. She would not even know what he meant. In this respect indeed Purcell was mistaken, for Lottie already knew well enough what were the hopes in his heart--resenting