d corners as a Chinese
puzzle. The walls were very thick, the windows few and small, the
chimneys numerous, and the angles innumerable.
Into one of the small rooms of this house, at about eleven o'clock at
night, I must now introduce the reader.
In that chamber, with her head resting on her hand, her eyes fixed
upon a wood-fire that was burning before her, one small and beautiful
foot stretched out towards it, while the other was concealed by the
drapery of her long robe; and with the whole graceful line of her
figure thrown back in the large arm-chair which she occupied--except,
indeed, the head, which was bent slightly forward--sat a very lovely
young woman, perhaps of two or three and twenty years of age, in
meditations evidently of a somewhat melancholy cast. The hand on
which her head leaned, and which was very soft, round, and fair, was
covered with rings, while the other was quite free from such
ornaments, with the exception of one small ring of gold upon the
slender third finger. In that hand she had been holding an open
letter; but, buried in meditation, she had suffered the paper to drop
from her hold, and it had fallen upon the ground beside her.
We had said that she was very beautiful, but her beauty was of a
different sort and character altogether from that of the lady whom we
have described under the name of Lady Laura Gaveston. Her hair was of
the richest, brightest, glossy black, as fine as silk, yet bending,
wherever it escaped, into rich and massy curls. There was one of
these which fell upon the back of her fair neck, and another upon
either temple. Upon the forehead, as was then customary, the hair was
divided into smaller curls, and cut much shorter, which fashion was a
great disfigurement to beauty, and certainly left her less handsome
than she otherwise would have appeared. Still, however, she was very,
very lovely; and the fine lines of her features, the clear rich brown
of her complexion, the glorious light of her large dark eyes,
softened by the long thick lashes that overshadowed them, the full
and rounded beauty of every limb, left it impossible even for human
heart to do away what nature's cunning hand had done.
There are certainly moments in which, as every one must have
remarked, a beautiful human countenance is more beautiful than at any
other period, when it acquires, from some accidental circumstance, a
temporary and extraordinary degree of loveliness. Sometimes it is the
mere disposition of light and shade that produ