in these pages, be like that other footstep to whose airy fall
your own heart once beat time. Take her as the visionary nursling
of your own fancy; and she will grow upon you, all the more
clearly, as the living woman who dwells in mine.

Among the sensations that crowded on me, when my eyes first looked
upon her--familiar sensations which we all know, which spring to
life in most of our hearts, die again in so many, and renew their
bright existence in so few--there was one that troubled and
perplexed me: one that seemed strangely inconsistent and
unaccountably out of place in Miss Fairlie's presence.

Mingling with the vivid impression produced by the charm of her
fair face and head, her sweet expression, and her winning
simplicity of manner, was another impression, which, in a shadowy
way, suggested to me the idea of something wanting. At one time
it seemed like something wanting in HER: at another, like
something wanting in myself, which hindered me from understanding
her as I ought. The impression was always strongest in the most
contradictory manner, when she looked at me; or, in other words,
when I was most conscious of the harmony and charm of her face,
and yet, at the same time, most troubled by the sense of an
incompleteness which it was impossible to discover. Something
wanting, something wanting--and where it was, and what it was, I
could not say.

The effect of this curious caprice of fancy (as I thought it then)
was not of a nature to set me at my ease, during a first interview
with Miss Fairlie. The few kind words of welcome which she spoke
found me hardly self-possessed enough to thank her in the