through the story of his troubles and temptations. He worked with such infinite care and such insidious art, while he simulated the reckless, generous impulses of a simple-minded, honest-hearted hero of melodrama, that she gave her entire love to him, and became his promised wife. Her parents opposed the marriage, seeing facts with the eyes of experience, but she held to her determination, defiantly proclaimed her faith in the man of her choice, and fought in defence of her love as fiercely as a lioness defends her cubs. Then all her womanhood was aroused, and mind and feeling put forth their strength for love had waked the heroine in her, and the spirit of romance exercised its magic influence upon her life. But the truth broke upon her with sudden cruelty. In an unguarded moment of anxiety concerning her wedding portion, should she succeed in obtaining her parents’ consent, the lover revealed the mercenary motive of his wooing. Her pride was wounded, her love insulted, and by this lightning-shock all her better, truer self was blighted in its growth. All the taunts that she had endured in defence of her love, all the sanctity of feeling laid bare to the callous stare of this man, recoiled upon her like the backwash of a wave of bitter waters, turning all her sweetness sour. Then she grew to mistrust all men because of the falseness of that one, and for a time she really set her face against marriage, and that, too, when her face had yet the bloom of girlhood upon it. After a while, however, there came in her life an Indian summer of love-longings and marriage-hopes, but by that time the bitterness of doubt and disappointment had hardened the tone of her voice, drawn her mouth to a set sternness, and tainted her mind with cynicism. So now, though there be plenty to flirt with her, there be none who strive to lure back the softness of her nature through the gentle persuasion of love, and no doubt she has recognised this, for she always pretends to laugh at sentiment, and to regard emotion as a species of hysteria. But once I chanced to notice her while a girl, with a voice that sounded like the very incarnation of music—she was singing a simple, pathetic little folk-song.