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ready, with a Frenchman's quick amour propre, he liked her for being so engrossed by a work of his. Her face had not the dazzling beauty of Augusta's, yet was it soft and regular a sort of face Westall delighted to draw the broad, full, but not high brow, the small straight nose, the inexplicable yet all expressive little mouth and small round chin, the large, very blue eyes, placed rather far apart-enough so to give a frank but not a vacant expression. She was somewhat pale from recent illness, and the hand on which she leaned was whiter than a hothouse lily. Her hair, of the gold painters and poets depict, parted on her forehead, fell down either side of her face on the purple velvet shawl wrapped around her, while the "back hair" was gathered in a thick knot behind.

As she looked up, and, without any feminine affectation or coquettish embarrassment, rose calmly and kindly to welcome her cousin and his friend, the latter of whom felt that she was a being he had faintly imagined and imperfectly portrayed, but never met with before.

She simply said, but without offering her hand, “I ought to apologize for not being aware of your entrance, but this is my exeuse," pointing to the book, "and one its author will surely admit.”

"Most proud," said De Villeneuve," in any way to have caught your eyes, and arrested your thoughts. We poets have many disappointments, many sorrows, but we have, above all men, the glorious privilege of stealing on Beauty's solitude, and unlocking, with the golden key of poetry, that rich casket of gems, her heart.”

Ellen smiled, and raised her frank eyes quite unmoved by the ardent admiration of his. She was indeed a rare specimen of a purely English maiden-a mixture of the Psyche and the Madonna, a combination of soul and feeling, frank without boldness, gentle but not inanimate, intellectual without aiming at being so. There is a virgin by Guido, which would resemble her, if, to the holy sweetness of the face, were added the thought and tenderness of a woman not so blest.

As De Villeneuve gazed at her, he felt that his heart was not pure enough to mirror such a nature, but that his intellect was bright enough to understand and appreciate her. Already, with a French poet's talent for turning all things to account, his active fancy had woven her form into a wild web, which was to delight all Paris as soon as he could hurry through two small volumes.

However, this was no place for reverie. Annie had to be introduced-Annie, who, flushed, squeezed, and scarcely able to turn her head, so tightly had Le Gracieux tied and twisted her hair, had never felt so wretched, nor looked so awkward.

"Assez jolie mais très-gauche," said De Villeneuve, when Julian asked his opinion. However, Annie felt all the admiration she did not inspire: if she had thought Julian's small moustache and imperial beautiful, the immense Grammont of De Villeneuve seemed to her finer still. He was not by any means so handsome nor so well made as Julian, but he was more outré, more striking, and taller,

He was dressed in the extreme of the romantic school. If Julian's hair hung in ringlets on his collar, De Villeneuve's fell on his shoulders. His fine eyes, rather light than dark, but of a strange dazzling light, startled poor Annie; his cheek was pale, his attitudes were studies for a tragedian, his voice was deep, and calculated to wake all the romantic echoes of a young girl's heart, while almost every speech was a sentiment, every expression, poetry. He spoke English with grace and ease; and, as is common with well-read foreigners, his words were rather those of books than of men, while a foreign accent lent an interest and novelty to what he said.

The girls retired to dress for dinner.

What think you of Augusta?" asked

Julian.

"She is most beautiful!"

"And of Ellen ?"

"She is less, and yet more than beautiful."

"And of Annie?"

"She is a wild Scotch girl aping la Parisienne. In a snood and kirtle she would be pretty and picturesque; as it is, she is—may I speak freely? . . .”

"Of course."

"A caricature."

"Then you

admire Ellen most?"

"I seldom admire any woman, for admiration implies inferiority; yet, if my own imagination does not invest her with a false halo, if she is what I divine, I could revere her." "But her beauty is not of so grand, so noble a style as Augusta's."

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"The one, Julian, is the queen-like beauty which makes a court around it, whether it dwells in cottage or in palace -but a court with all its little vanities and petty strifes, its worldly passions and its paltry aims; the other is the kind of saint-like beauty which makes the poorest niche that holds it a sort of shrine-in its pure atmosphere no thoughts of earth can dwell: the one may wake earthly passion, but the other heavenly love!" "Bravo, Alphonse! the poet has the only

VOL. I.

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