ature would seem the prerogative of
the highly born; fashioned to the expression of high and holy thoughts;
moulded to the utterance of ennobling sentiment, or proud desire. Its
every lineament tells of birth and blood.

Now, Mrs. Rooney's mouth was a large and handsome one, her teeth white
and regular withal, and, when at rest, there was nothing to find
fault with; but let her speak--was it her accent?--was it the awful
provincialism of her native city?--was it that strange habit of
contortion any _patois_ is sure to impress upon the speaker?--I cannot
tell, but certainly it lent to features of very considerable attraction
a vulgarising character of expression.

It was truly provoking to see so handsome a person mar every effect
of her beauty by some extravagant display. Dramatising every trivial
incident in life, she rolled her eyes, looked horror-struck or happy,
sweet or sarcastic, lofty or languishing, all in one minute. There was
an eternal play of feature of one kind or other; there was no rest,
no repose. Her arms--and they were round, and fair, and
well-fashioned--were also enlisted in the service; and to a distant
observer Mrs. Rooney's animated conversation appeared like a priest
performing mass.

And that beautiful head, whose fair and classic proportions were
balanced so equally upon her white and swelling throat, how tantalising
to know it full of low and petty ambitions, of vulgar tastes, of
contemptible rivalries, of insignificant triumph. To see her, amid the
voluptuous splendour and profusion of her gorgeous house, resplendent
with jewellery, glistening in all the blaze of emeralds and rubies; to
watch how the poisonous venom of innate vulgarity had so tainted that
fair and beautiful form, rendering her an object of ridicule who should
have been a thing to worship. It was too bad; and, as she sat at dinner,
her plump but taper fingers grasping a champagne glass, she seemed like
a Madonna enacting the part of Moll Flagon.

Now, Mrs. Paul's manner had as many discrepancies as her features. She
was by nature a good, kind, merry, coarse personage, who loved a joke
not the less if it were broad as well as long. Wealth, however, and its
attendant evils, suggested the propriety of a very different line; and
catching up as she did at every opportunity that presented itself such
of the airs and graces as she believed to be the distinctive traits
of high life, she figured about in these cast-off attractions,