There is one special confidence which, in all your talk about plans and purposes, you do not give to your father:  you reserve that for the ear of Nelly alone.  Why happens it that a father is almost the last confidant that a son makes in any matter deeply affecting the feelings?  Is it the fear that a father may regard such matter as boyish?  Is it a lingering suspicion of your own childishness; or of that extreme of affection which reduces you to childishness?

Why is it always that a man, of whatever age or condition, forbears to exhibit to those whose respect for his judgment and mental abilities only he seeks, the most earnest qualities of the heart, and those intenser susceptibilities of love which underlie his nature, and which give a color in spite of him to the habit of his life?  Why is he so morbidly anxious to keep out of sight any extravagances of affection, when he blurts officiously to the world his extravagances of action and of thought?  Can any lover explain me this?

Again, why is a sister the one of all others to whom you first whisper the dawnings of any strong emotion,—­as if it were a weakness that her charity alone could cover?

However this may be, you have a long story for Nelly’s ear.  It is some days after your return:  you are strolling down a quiet, wooded lane,—­a remembered place,—­when you first open to her your heart.  Your talk is of Laura Dalton.  You describe her to Nelly with the extravagance of a glowing hope.  You picture those qualities that have attracted you most; you dwell upon her beauty, her elegant figure, her grace of conversation, her accomplishments.  You make a study that feeds your passion as you go on.  You rise by the very glow of your speech into a frenzy of feeling that she has never excited before.  You are quite sure that you would be wretched and miserable without her.

“Do you mean to marry her?” says Nelly.

It is a question that gives a swift bound to the blood of youth.  It involves the idea of possession, and of the dependence of the cherished one upon your own arm and strength.  But the admiration you entertain seems almost too lofty for this; Nelly’s question makes you diffident of reply; and you lose yourself in a new story of those excellencies of speech and of figure which have so charmed you.

Nelly’s eye on a sudden becomes full of tears.

——­“What is it, Nelly?”

“Our mother, Clarence.”

The word and the thought dampen your ardor; the sweet watchfulness and gentle kindness of that parent for an instant make a sad contrast with the showy qualities you have been naming; and the spirit of that mother—­called up by Nelly’s words—­seems to hang over you with an anxious love that subdues all your pride of passion.

But this passes; and now—­half believing that Nelly’s thoughts have run over the same ground with yours—­you turn special pleader for your fancy.  You argue for the beauty which you just now affirmed; you do your utmost to win over Nelly to some burst of admiration.  Yet there she sits beside you, thoughtfully and half sadly, playing with the frail autumn flowers that grow at her side.  What can she be thinking?  You ask it by a look.