occurred fully to arouse his slumbering intellect, but in the vague dreams that visited his boyhood, in the wild aspirations that haunted his later youth, in a thousand wildering fancies and emotions that crossed him daily, he experienced the stirrings of the unborn but living genius within him. Howell had never yet written a line, but he had thought of a world of poetry. Often would he go out in the calm moonlight and sit for hours gazing at the placid landscape before him, lost in a reverie too deep for words, and often would he launch his boat amid the surf when the lowering clouds portended a storm, experiencing a strange joy in battling with the tempest. He knew it not, but it was the soul within him that now led him to be an idle dreamer and now impelled him to brave the ocean hurricane, and every one who has felt the cravings of an unsatisfied intellect within has acted as Howell did, though like him, they may often have been unconscious of why they longed—now for quiet, and now for excitement, but ever for novelty. Genius is like the troubled ocean: it can never find rest.
From the first moment that Howell saw Kate Eldrington, he loved her; a character like hers was the very one to capture his romantic mind. He loved with all the ardor of youth, with all the intensity of a first affection, and with all the passionate earnestness of his thoroughly poetic nature. Nor did Kate repel his attention. To win the heart of someone as rich and gifted as Howell was a triumph, even for her. Perhaps her heart was incapable of truly loving any object besides herself, but the poetry that Howell breathed in every compliment he paid her at least dazzled her fancy, while the eclat of possessing the rich young heir for a lover captivated her vanity. Still, she was in no haste to receive a proposal and surrender her train of admirers, but she was, on the contrary, very willing to await Howell's majority, when his fortune would come into his possession. She found it not as difficult to manage as she wished. The very poetic nature of Howell had led him to avoid society—whose cant, shallowness, and hollow-heartedness he could not help despising—and he was consequently a mere child in the hands of such a coquette as Kate. But, on this evening, she had imprudently consented to accompany Howell alone on a walk, and he had led her to this romantic spot on the riverside. Kate soon found that her art would not be available here. The scenery around, the mystic moonlight, and the poetry that Howell breathed in every word insensibly influenced even her heart, and she found herself almost before she was aware of it gliding into a strain of sentiment. Then she would have checked herself, but it was too late. Howell had now obtained the mastery, and in burning language he poured forth his passion, while Kate, no longer the imperious beauty, actually listened with a beating heart to his eloquent appeal, and when he had finished, sank weeping on his bosom.
"God bless you, dear, dear Miss Eldrington—or let me henceforth call you Kate, my own sweet Kate. Again, God in heaven, bless you for thus assuring me of your priceless love."
Kate was now completely subdued, and still hiding her head in her lover's bosom, she murmured a reply, which induced Howell to clasp her to him in even greater transport, while tears of unutterable joy gushed from his eyes. And for the remainder of that evening, it seemed as if Kate had caught a portion of her lover's passionate and poetic soul, while she replied to his fond endearments in words equally full of love.
CHAPTER II.
A week had passed when, in a luxurious apartment where Persian carpets, damask curtains, and other magnificent furniture attested to the wealth of the owner, sat Kate Eldrington and her distant and dependent relative Edith Bellanger. A greater contrast could not have existed than that between the two cousins. Kate was tall and queenly, with thick glossy tresses of black, eyes that vied with the ebon darkness of midnight, and a countenance and port that reminded the spectator of a Juno. Edith Bellanger, on the contrary, was rather petite, though her figure was exquisite, and she moved with the grace and airiness of a dryad. Her eyes were a deep blue, soft and melting as the azure of a twilight sky. Her hair was golden and fell in laughing tresses on either side of her face. No one had ever seen Edith's fair countenance distorted with passion, though her amiability was by no means the placid repose of a phlegmatic constitution. Under her usually quiet and retiring manner, she had a mind of no ordinary power and a bosom keenly sensitive to all the holier emotions of the soul. Had Edith been rich like her cousin, she would have won nearly as much admiration, though of a different character; but now, known as a dependent on her cousin's bounty, and feeling that shrinking modesty, which always, in circumstances like hers, attends to a sensitive mind, she almost wholly avoided society. Kate felt no disposition to alter her cousin's determination and was very content that Edith should play the part of a humble dependent rather than that of a rival.
Edward Howell was, therefore, one of the few gentlemen of Kate's acquaintance to whom Edith had become even more casually known. His enthusiastic and romantic character had ever been her admiration, and though she rarely exchanged a word with him, she was delighted to sit unnoticed by and hear his conversation with Kate. Sometimes, when Howell chanced to detect how eagerly she listened to him, a burning blush would shoot over her face, and if, at any time during the remainder of
