CHAPTER I.
THERE is continual spring and harvest here-- Continual, both meeting at one time; For both the boughs do laughing blossoms bear, And with fresh colours deck the wanton prime; And eke at once the heavy trees they climb, Which seem to labour under their fruit's load.
SPENSER: _The Garden of Adonis_.
Vis boni In ipsa inesset forma.*--TERENCE.
* "Even in beauty there exists the power of virtue." BEAUTY, thou art twice blessed; thou blessest the gazer and the possessor; often at once the effect and the cause of goodness! A sweet disposition, a lovely soul, an affectionate nature, will speak in the eyes, the lips, the brow, and become the cause of beauty.

On the other hand, they who have a gift that commands love, a key that opens all hearts, are ordinarily inclined to look with happy eyes upon the world,--to be cheerful and serene, to hope and to confide.

There is more wisdom than the vulgar dream of in our admiration of a fair face.
Evelyn Cameron was beautiful,--a beauty that came from the heart, and went to the heart; a beauty, the very spirit of which was love! Love smiled on her dimpled lips, it reposed on her open brow, it played in the profuse and careless ringlets of darkest yet sunniest auburn, which a breeze could lift from her delicate and virgin cheek; Love, in all its tenderness, in all its kindness, its unsuspecting truth,--Love coloured every thought, murmured in her low melodious voice, in all its symmetry and glorious womanhood.

Love swelled the swan-like neck, and moulded the rounded limb.
She was just the kind of person that takes the judgment by storm: whether gay or grave, there was so charming and irresistible a grace about her.

She seemed born, not only to captivate the giddy, but to turn the heads of the sage.