st and seemly.
Come, Janet; we will practise state--we will go to the withdrawing-room,
my good girl, and thou shalt put these rebel locks in order, and
imprison within lace and cambric the bosom that beats too high."

They went to the withdrawing apartment accordingly, where the Countess
playfully stretched herself upon the pile of Moorish cushions, half
sitting, half reclining, half wrapt in her own thoughts, half listening
to the prattle of her attendant.

While she was in this attitude, and with a corresponding expression
betwixt listlessness and expectation on her fine and intelligent
features, you might have searched sea and land without finding anything
half so expressive or half so lovely. The wreath of brilliants which
mixed with her dark-brown hair did not match in lustre the hazel eye
which a light-brown eyebrow, pencilled with exquisite delicacy, and long
eyelashes of the same colour, relieved and shaded. The exercise she had
just taken, her excited expectation and gratified vanity, spread a glow
over her fine features, which had been sometimes censured (as beauty
as well as art has her minute critics) for being rather too pale. The
milk-white pearls of the necklace which she wore, the same which she had
just received as a true-love token from her husband, were excelled in
purity by her teeth, and by the colour of her skin, saving where the
blush of pleasure and self-satisfaction had somewhat stained the neck
with a shade of light crimson.--"Now, have done with these busy fingers,
Janet," she said to her handmaiden, who was still officiously employed
in bringing her hair and her dress into order--"have done, I say. I must
see your father ere my lord arrives, and also Master Richard Varney,
whom my lord has highly in his esteem--but I could tell that of him
would lose him favour."

"Oh, do not do so, good my lady!" replied Janet; "leave him to God, who
punishes the wicked in His own time; but do not you cross Varney's path,
for so thoroughly hath he my lord's ear, that few have thriven who have
thwarted his courses."

"And from whom had you this, my most righteous Janet?" said the
Countess; "or why should I keep terms with so mean a gentleman as
Varney, being as I am, wife to his master and patron?"

"Nay, madam," replied Janet Foster, "your ladyship knows better than I;
but I have heard my father say he would rather cross a hungry wolf than
thwart Richard Varney in his projects. And he has often charged