A visit to your home wakens ardor by contrast as much as by absence.  Madge, so gentle, and now stealing sly looks at you in a way so different from her hoidenish manner of school-days, you regard complacently as a most lovable, fond girl,—­the very one for some fond and amiable young man whose soul is not filled, as yours is, with higher things!  To Nelly, earnestly listening, you drop only exaggerated hints of the wonderful beauty and dignity of this new being of your fancy.  Of her age you scrupulously say nothing.

The trivialities of Dalton amaze you:  it is hard to understand how a man within the limit of such influences as Miss Dalton must inevitably exert, can tamely sit down to a rubber of whist, and cigars!  There must be a sad lack of congeniality;—­it would certainly be a proud thing to supply that lack!

The new feeling, wild and vague as it is,—­for as yet you have only most casual acquaintance with Laura Dalton,—­invests the whole habit of your study; not quickening overmuch the relish for Dugald Stewart, or the miserable skeleton of college Logic, but spending a sweet charm upon the graces of Rhetoric and the music of Classic Verse.  It blends harmoniously with your quickened ambition.  There is some last appearance that you have to make upon the college stage, in the presence of the great worthies of the State, and of all the beauties of the town,—­Laura chiefest among them.  In view of it you feel dismally intellectual.  Prodigious faculties are to be brought to the task.

You think of throwing out ideas that will quite startle His Excellency the Governor, and those very distinguished public characters whom the college purveyors vote into their periodic public sittings.  You are quite sure of surprising them, and of deeply provoking such scheming, shallow politicians as have never read Wayland’s “Treatise,” and who venture incautiously within hearing of your remarks.  You fancy yourself in advance the victim of a long leader in the next day’s paper, and the thoughtful but quiet cause of a great change in the political programme of the State.  But crowning and eclipsing all the triumph, are those dark eyes beaming on you from some corner of the church their floods of unconscious praise and tenderness.

Your father and Nelly are there to greet you.  He has spoken a few calm, quiet words of encouragement, that make you feel—­very wrongfully—­that he is a cold man, with no earnestness of feeling.  As for Nelly, she clasps your arm with a fondness, and with a pride, that tell at every step her praises and her love.

But even this, true and healthful as it is, fades before a single word of commendation from the new arbitress of your feeling.  You have seen Miss Dalton!  You have met her on that last evening of your cloistered life in all the elegance of ball-costume; your eye has feasted on her elegant figure, and upon her eye sparkling with the consciousness of beauty.  You have talked with Miss Dalton about Byron, about Wordsworth, about Homer.  You have quoted poetry to Miss Dalton; you have clasped Miss Dalton’s hand!