poet's
strongest fortress; it is for their description that he most gathers
up his forces and puts forth all his strength. What of her eyes?
Well, her eyes were bright enough, large enough, well set in her
head. They were clever eyes too--nay, honest eyes also, which is
better. But they were not softly feminine eyes. They never hid
themselves beneath their soft fringes when too curiously looked into,
as a young girl at her window half hides herself behind her curtain.
They were bold eyes, I was going to say, but the word would signify
too much in their dispraise; daring eyes, I would rather say,
courageous, expressive, never shrinking, sometimes also suspicious.
They were fit rather for a man than for so beautiful a girl as our
Caroline Waddington.

But perhaps the most wonderful grace about her was her walk. "Vera
incessu patuit Dea." Alas! how few women can walk! how many are
wilfully averse to attempting any such motion! They scuffle, they
trip, they trot, they amble, they waddle, they crawl, they drag
themselves on painfully, as though the flounces and furbelows around
them were a burden too heavy for easy, graceful motion; but, except
in Spain, they rarely walk. In this respect our heroine was equal to
an Andalusian.

Such and so great were Miss Waddington's outward graces. Some attempt
must also be made to tell of those inner stores with which this
gallant vessel was freighted; for, after all, the outward bravery is
not everything with a woman. It may be that a man in selecting his
wife rarely looks for much else;--for that in addition, of course, to
money; but though he has looked for little else, some other things do
frequently force themselves on his attention soon after the knot is
tied; and as Caroline Waddington will appear in these pages as wife
as well as maid, as a man's companion as well as his plaything,
it may be well to say now something as to her fitness for such
occupation.

We will say, then, that she was perhaps even more remarkable for her
strength of mind than for her beauty of person. At present, she was
a girl of twenty, and hardly knew her own power; but the time was to
come when she should know it and should use it. She was possessed of
a stubborn, enduring, manly will; capable of conquering much, and not
to be conquered easily. She had a mind which, if rightly directed,
might achieve great and good things, but of which it might be
predicted that it would certainly achieve something, an