The boy received the tidings with a burst of grief, which seemed to threaten his existence.  But the sorrows of youth are usually short-lived, particularly in the case of eager, energetic natures.  The exchange of solitude for the crowd; the emulation of college life; the sports and communion of youthful associates—­served, after a while, to soothe the sorrows of Ralph Colleton.  Indeed, he found it necessary that he should bend himself earnestly to his studies, that he might forget his griefs.  And, in a measure he succeeded; at least, he subdued their more fond expression, and only grew sedate, instead of passionate.  The bruises of his heart had brought the energies of his mind to their more active uses.

From fifteen to twenty is no very long leap in the history of youth.  We will make it now, and place the young Ralph—­now something older in mind as in body—­returned from college, finely formed, intellectual, handsome, vivacious, manly, spirited, and susceptible—­as such a person should be—­once again in close intimacy with his beautiful cousin.  The season which had done so much for him, had been no less liberal with her; and we now survey her, the expanding flower, all bloom and fragrance, a tribute of the spring, flourishing in the bosom of the more forward summer.

Ralph came from college to his uncle’s domicil, now his only home.  The circumstances of his father’s fate and fortune, continually acting upon his mind and sensibilities from boyhood, had made his character a marked and singular one—­proud, jealous, and sensitive, to an extreme which was painful not merely to himself, but at times to others.  But he was noble, lofty, sincere, without a touch of meanness in his composition, above circumlocution, with a simplicity of character strikingly great, but without anything like puerility or weakness.

The children—­for such, in reference to their experience, we may venture to call them—­had learned to recognise in the progress of a very brief period but a single existence.  Ralph looked only for Edith, and cared nothing for other sunlight; while Edith, with scarcely less reserve than her bolder companion, had speech and thought for few besides Ralph.  Circumstances contributed not a little to what would appear the natural growth of this mutual dependence.  They were perpetually left together, and with few of those tacit and readily understood restraints, unavoidably accompanying the presence of others older than themselves.  Residing, save at few brief intervals, at the plantation of Colonel Colleton, they saw little and knew less of society; and the worthy colonel, not less ambitious than proud, having become a politician, had left them a thousand opportunities of intimacy which had now become so grateful to them both.  Half of his time was taken up in public matters.  A leader of his party in the section of country in which he lived, he was always busy in the responsibilities imposed upon him by such a station;