The black-eyed Jenny, with whom a correspondence at red heat was kept up for several weeks, is long before this entirely out of your regard,—­not so much by reason of the six months’ disparity of age, as from the fact, communicated quite confidentially by the travelled Nat, that she has had a desperate flirtation with a handsome midshipman.  The conclusion is natural that she is an inconstant, cruel-hearted creature, with little appreciation of real worth; and furthermore, that all midshipmen are a very contemptible—­not to say dangerous—­set of men.  She is consigned to forgetfulness and neglect; and the late lover has long ago consoled himself by reading in a spirited way that passage of Childe Harold commencing,—­

          “I have not loved the world, nor the world me.”

As for Madge, the memory of her has been more wakeful, but less violent.  To say nothing of occasional returns to the old homestead, when you have met her Nelly’s letters not unfrequently drop a careless half-sentence that keeps her strangely in mind.

“Madge,” she says, “is sitting by me with her work;” or, “You ought to see the little silk purse that Madge is knitting;” or,—­speaking of some country rout,—­“Madge was there in the sweetest dress you can imagine.”  All this will keep Madge in mind; not, it is true, in the ambitious moods, or in the frolics with Dalton; but in those odd half-hours that come stealing over one at twilight, laden with sweet memories of the days of old.

A new romantic admiration is started by those pale lady-faces which light up on a Sunday the gallery of the college chapel.  An amiable and modest fancy gives to them all a sweet classic grace.  The very atmosphere of these courts, wakened with high metaphysic discourse, seems to lend them a Greek beauty and fineness; and you attach to the prettiest, that your eye can reach, all the charms of some Sciote maiden, and all the learning of her father—­the professor.  And as you lie half-wakeful and half-dreaming, through the long Divisions of the Doctor’s morning discourse, the twinkling eyes in some corner of the gallery bear you pleasant company as you float down those streaming visions which radiate from you far over the track of the coming life.

But following very closely upon this comes a whole volume of street romance.  There are prettily shaped figures that go floating at convenient hours for college observation along the thoroughfares of the town.  And these figures come to be known, and the dresses, and the streets; and even the door-plate is studied.  The hours are ascertained, by careful observation and induction, at which some particular figure is to be met,—­or is to be seen at some low parlor-window, in white summer dress, with head leaning on the hand, very melancholy, and very dangerous.  Perhaps her very card is stuck proudly into a corner of the mirror in the college-chamber.  After this may come moonlight meetings at the gate, or long listenings to the plaintive lyrics that steal out of the parlor-windows, and that blur wofully the text of the Conic Sections.