MABEL CHESTER was the beauty and toast of South Shropshire.

She had refused the hand of half the country squires in a circle of some dozen miles, till at last Mr.Vane became her suitor.

Besides a handsome face and person, Mr.Vane had accomplishments his rivals did not possess.

He read poetry to her on mossy banks an hour before sunset, and awakened sensibilities which her other suitors shocked, and they them.
The lovely Mabel had a taste for beautiful things, without any excess of that severe quality called judgment.
I will explain.

If you or I, reader, had read to her in the afternoon, amid the smell of roses and eglantine, the chirp of the mavis, the hum of bees, the twinkling of butterflies, and the tinkle of distant sheep, something that combined all these sights, and sounds, and smells--say Milton's musical picture of Eden, P.L., lib.