Southern and Eastern born races fall in love at first sight in a way that the soberer Northener cannot understand.  A face in a crowd, a glance, a droop of the lashes, and all is said.  The seed of passion is sown and will grow in a day to all destroying proportions.  But the Northern heart is a very different affair.  It will play with its affections as a cat plays with a mouse; only the difference is, that the mouse grows larger and more formidable, like the one in the story of the Eastern sage, which successively changed its shape until it became a tiger, and the wise man was driven to take precautions for his own safety.  There is never the least doubt in the mind of an Italian or an Oriental when he is in love; but an Englishman will associate with a woman for ten years, and one day will wake up to the fact that he loves her, and has loved her probably for some time past.  And then his whole manner changes immediately, and he is apt to make himself very disagreeable unless indeed the lady loves him—­and women are rarely in doubt in their inmost hearts as to whether they love or not.

The heart of the cold northern-born man is a strange puzzle.  It can only be compared in its first awakening to a very backward spring.  In the first place, the previous absence of anything like love has bred a rough and somewhat coarse scepticism about the existence of passion at all.  Young Boreas scoffs at the mere mention of a serious affection, and turns up his nose at a love-match.  He thinks young women no end of fun; his vanity makes him fancy himself the heartless hero of many an adventure, and if, as frequently happens, he is but an imperfect gentleman, he will not scruple to devise, imagine, and recount (to his bosom friend, of course, in strictest secrecy) some hairbreadth escape from an irate husband or an avenging father, where he has nearly lost his life, he says, in the pursuit of some woman, generally a lady of spotless reputation whom he barely knows.  But put him in her society for an hour, with every opportunity of pressing his suit, and the veriest lambkin could not be more harmless.  He has not yet tasted blood, though he will often smack his lips and talk as if he had.

It is generally chance that makes him fall in love the first time.  He is thrown together with his fate—­tall or short, dark or fair, it makes no difference—­in some country house or on some journey.  For a long time her society only amuses him and helps to pass the hours, for Boreas is easily bored and finds time a terrible adversary.  Gradually he understands that she is a necessity to his comfort, and there is nothing he will not do to secure her on every possible opportunity for himself.  Then perhaps he allows to himself that he really does care a little, and he loses some of his incrustation of vanity.  He feels less sure of himself, and his companions observe that he ceases to talk of his alleged good fortunes.  Very, very slowly his real heart wakes up, and whatever is manly and serious