recalled our feelings when we first met, there would be fewer complaints than are now of disappointed expectations. First impressions are natural monitors, and nature is a true guide. My impressions were delightful—I slept contented and confiding; and my spirits next day were worthy of the lovely morning that aroused them.
Mrs. Audley's cottage, the landscape, and the sky, were altogether English: the white walls, the green blinds, the open sash-windows, the upper ones hung round with the thick jessamine that had grown up to the roof, the lower ones into which the rose-trees looked; the blinds half-way down, just showing the cluster of red roses and nothing more, though they completely admitted the air, loaded with the breath of the mignonette; while the eyes felt relieved by the green and beautiful, but dim light which they threw over the room. It was like enchantment to step from the cool and shadowy parlour into the garden with its thousand colours, the beds covered with annuals, those rainbows of the spring, the Guelder rose, the laburnums, mines of silver and gold; the fine green turf; but nothing struck me so much as, beneath the shade of an old beech tree, a bank entirely covered with violets. It may seem fanciful, but to me the violet is the very emblem of woman's love; it springs up in secret; it hides its perfume even when gathered; how timidly its deep blue leaves bend on their slight stem! The resemblance may be carried yet further—woman's love is but beautiful in its purity; let the hot breath of passion once sully
