t, so glowingly yet delicately handsome, as that of Aubrey
Devereux. Locks, soft, glossy, and twining into ringlets, fell in dark
profusion over a brow whiter than marble; his eyes were black and tender
as a Georgian girl's; his lips, his teeth, the contour of his face, were
all cast in the same feminine and faultless mould; his hands would have
shamed those of Madame de la Tisseur, whose lover offered six thousand
marks to any European who could wear her glove; and his figure would
have made Titania give up her Henchman, and the King of the Fairies be
anything but pleased with the exchange.

Such were my two brothers; or, rather (so far as the internal qualities
are concerned), such they seemed to me; for it is a singular fact that
we never judge of our near kindred so well as we judge of others; and I
appeal to any one, whether, of all people by whom he has been mistaken,
he has not been most often mistaken by those with whom he was brought
up.

I had always loved Aubrey, but they had not suffered him to love me;
and we had been so little together that we had in common none of those
childish remembrances which serve, more powerfully than all else in
later life, to cement and soften affection. In fact, I was the scapegoat
of the family. What I must have been in early childhood I cannot tell;
but before I was ten years old I was the object of all the despondency
and evil forebodings of my relations. My father said I laughed at _la
gloire et le grand monarque_ the very first time he attempted to explain
to me the value of the one and the greatness of the other. The countess
said I had neither my father's eye nor her own smile,--that I was slow
at my letters and quick with my tongue; and throughout the whole house
nothing was so favourite a topic as the extent of my rudeness and the
venom of my repartee. Montreuil, on his entrance into our family,
not only fell in with, but favoured and fostered, the reigning humour
against me; whether from that _divide et impera_ system, which was so
grateful to his temper, or from the mere love of meddling and intrigue,
which in him, as in Alberoni, attached itself equally to petty as to
large circles, was not then clearly apparent; it was only certain that
he fomented the dissensions and widened the breach between my brothers
and myself. Alas! after all, I believe my sole crime was my candour. I
had a spirit of frankness which no fear could tame, and my vengeance for
any infantine pun