It was late in the afternoon of the following day before I was able to join the party assembled at the merchant's house; it was a villa about two miles out of the town, pleasantly situated amidst flower-gardens celebrated in the neighbourhood for their beauty.

The breakfast had been long over; the company was scattered over the lawn,--some formed into a dance on the smooth lawn; some seated under shady awnings; others gliding amidst parterres, in which all the glow of colour took a glory yet more vivid under the flush of a brilliant sunshine; and the ripple of a soft western breeze.

Music, loud and lively, mingled with the laughter of happy children, who formed much the larger number of the party.
Standing at the entrance of an arched trellis, that led from the hardier flowers of the lawn to a rare collection of tropical plants under a lofty glass dome (connecting, as it were, the familiar vegetation of the North with that of the remotest East), was a form that instantaneously caught and fixed my gaze.

The entrance of the arcade was covered with parasite creepers, in prodigal luxuriance, of variegated gorgeous tints,--scarlet, golden, purple; and the form, an idealized picture of man's youth fresh from the hand of Nature, stood literally in a frame of blooms.
Never have I seen human face so radiant as that young man's.

There was in the aspect an indescribable something that literally dazzled.