That was the happiest autumn Aymer ever knew. Even now he looks back at its sweetness with a species of regret. The sunshine was warmer, the blue of the sky richer, the yellow mist that hung over the landscape softer, the bee went by with a joyous hum, the crimson-and-gold of the dying leaves was more brilliant than ever it had been before or since. Love lent his palette to Nature, and the world was aglow with colour. How delicious it is to see everything through the medium, and in the company of a noble girl just ripening into womanhood! I remember one such summer— But age with his stealing steps Has clawed me in his clutch. She was very beautiful; it is hard to describe her. It was not perhaps so much the features, the hue of the hair, the colour of the eye, the complexion, or even the shape, as the life, the vitality, the wonderful freshness which seemed to throw a sudden light over her, as when the sunshine falls upon a bed of flowers:— Idalian Aphrodite, beautiful, Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian wells, With rosy, slender fingers backward drew From her warm brows and bosom, her deep hair Ambrosial, golden round her lucid throat And shoulder: from the violets her light foot Shone rosy-white, and o’er her rounded form Between the shadows of the vine-bunches Floated the glowing sunlights as she moved. The modern taste for catalogues compels me to name the colour of her eye and hair. Her eye was full, large, and lustrous; that deep black so rarely seen—an eye that gave quick expression to the emotions of the heart—that flashed with laughter, or melted with tenderness. Her hair was not quite golden; it was properly brown, but so near the true golden that a little sunlight lit it up with a glossy radiance impossible to express in words. The complexion was that lovely mingling of red and white, which the prince in the fairy tale prayed his lady-love might have, when he saw the crimson blood of a raven he had slain, staining the translucent marble slab upon which it had fallen. The nose was nearly straight; the lips full and scarlet. She was tall, but not too tall. It is difficult for a woman to have a good carriage unless she be of moderate height. Enough of the catalogue system. They visited all the places in the neighbourhood where Aymer’s pencil could find a subject. Now it was a grand old beech tree; now only a grey stone, set up centuries and centuries since as a “stone of memorial” by races long reduced to ashes; now The Towers, the home of Lady Lechester. With them always went Dando, Waldron’s favourite dog, a huge mastiff, who gambolled about in unwieldly antics at Violet’s feet.