You drop hints from time to time, to those with whom you are most familiar, of some prospective change of condition.  There is a new and cheerful interest in the building-plans of your neighbors,—­a new and cheerful study of the principles of domestic architecture,—­in which very elegant boudoirs, adorned with harps, hold prominent place; and libraries with gilt-bound books, very rich in lyrical and dramatic poetry; fine views from bay-windows; graceful pots of flowers; sleek-looking Italian greyhounds; cheerful sunlight; musical goldfinches chattering on the wall; superb pictures of princesses in peasant dresses; soft Axminster carpets; easy-acting bell-pulls; gigantic candelabrums; porcelain vases of classic shape; neat waiters in white aprons; luxurious lounges; and, to crown them all with the very height of your pride,—­the elegant Laura, the mistress, and the guardian of your soul, moving amid the scene like a new Duchess of Valliere!

You catch chance sights here and there of the blue-eyed Madge:  you see her in her mother’s household, the earnest and devoted daughter,—­gliding gracefully about her mother’s cottage, the very type of gentleness and of duty.  Yet withal there are sparks of spirit in her that pique your pride, lofty as it is.  You offer flowers, which she accepts with a kind smile, not of coquetry, but of simplest thankfulness.  She is not the girl to gratify your vanity with any half-show of tenderness.  And if there lived ever in her heart an old girlish liking for the schoolboy Clarence, it is all gone before the romantic lover of the elegant Laura; or at most it lies in some obscure corner of her soul, never to be brought to light.

You enter upon the new pursuits, which your father has advised, with a lofty consciousness, not only of the strength of your mind, but of your heart.  You relieve your opening professional study with long letters to Miss Dalton, full of Shakspearean compliments, and touched off with very dainty elaboration.  And you receive pleasant, gossiping notes in answer,—­full of quotations, but meaning very little.

Youth is in a grand flush, like the hot days of ending summer; and pleasant dreams thrall your spirit, like the smoky atmosphere that bathes the landscape of an August day.  Hope rides high in the heavens, as when the summer sun mounts nearest to the zenith.  Youth feels the fulness of maturity before the second season of life is ended; yet is it a vain maturity, and all the glow is deceitful.  Those fruits that ripen in summer do not last.  They are sweet; they are glowing with gold; but they melt with a luscious sweetness upon the lip.  They do not give that strength and nutriment which will bear a man bravely through the coming chills of winter.

* * * * *

The last scene of summer changes now to the cobwebbed ceiling of an attorney’s office.  Books of law, scattered ingloriously at your elbow, speak dully to the flush of your vanities.  You are seated at your side-desk, where you have wrought at those heavy, mechanic labors of drafting which go before a knowledge of your craft.