bouquet is for herself. I have that faith in the perception of that
lovely lady. It is at least my habit--I hope I may say, my nature, to
believe the best of people, rather than the worst. If I thought that
all this sparkling setting of beauty--this fine fashion--these blazing
jewels and lustrous silks and airy gauzes, embellished with
gold-threaded embroidery and wrought in a thousand exquisite
elaborations, so that I cannot see one of those lovely girls pass me
by without thanking God for the vision--if I thought that this was
all, and that underneath her lace flounces and diamond bracelets
Aurelia was a sullen, selfish woman, then I should turn sadly
homewards, for I should see that her jewels were flashing scorn upon
the object they adorned, and that her laces were of a more exquisite
loveliness than the woman whom they merely touched with a superficial
grace. It would be like a gaily decorated mausoleum--bright to see,
but silent and dark within.

"Great excellences, my dear Prue," I sometimes allow myself to say,
"lie concealed in the depths of character, like pearls at the bottom
of the sea. Under the laughing, glancing surface, how little they are
suspected! Perhaps love is nothing else than the sight of them by one
person. Hence every man's mistress is apt to be an enigma to everybody
else. I have no doubt that when Aurelia is engaged, people will say
that she is a most admirable girl, certainly; but they cannot
understand why any man should be in love with her. As if it were at
all necessary that they should! And her lover, like a boy who finds a
pearl in the public street, and wonders as much that others did not
see it as that he did, will tremble until he knows his passion is
returned; feeling, of course, that the whole world must be in love
with this paragon who cannot possibly smile upon anything so unworthy
as he."