an exception--fair, blue-eyed, rosy, and with a soft
feminine contour of visage, which had often drawn on him reproaches
for not being really the daughter all his mother's friends desired
for her.

And Julius, with the outlines of the others, was Albino, with
transparent skin mantling with colour that contrasted with his snowy
hair, eyebrows, and the lashes, veiling eyes of a curious coral hue,
really not unpleasing under their thick white fringes, but most
inconveniently short of sight, although capable of much work; in
fact, he was a curiously perfect pink-and-white edition of his dark
and bronzed brother the sailor.

The dark eyes came from the father's side; Cecil had them, and very
observing orbs they seemed to be, travelling about from one face to
another, and into every corner of the room, scrutinizing every
picture or piece of plate, and trying to see into the conservatory,
which had a glass door opening from one end of the room. She was
the youngest of the brides, and her features and form seemed hardly
developed, nor had she attained the air of a matron; her fashionable
dress of crisp white worked muslin with blue trimmings, and blue
ribbons in her brown hair, only gave her the air of a young girl at
her first party, in spite of her freedom from all shyness as she sat
at the head of the table in contented self-possession, her little
slender figure as upright as a perfect spine could make it.

Very different was the bride on Raymond's right hand. She was of
middle height, soft, round, and plump, carrying her head a little
tenderly on one side with a delightful degagee kind of ease, and air
of vivacious indolence. Her complexion was creamy and colourless,
her nose rather retrousse, her lips full and parting in a delicious
roguish smile, answering to the sleepily twinkling eyes, whose
irides seemed to shade so imperceptibly into the palest gray, that
there was no telling where the pupils ended, especially as the lids
were habitually half closed, as if weighed down by the black length
of their borders. The habit of arching up one or other of the
eyebrows, in surprise or interrogation, gave a drollery to the
otherwise nonchalant sweetness of the countenance. The mass of
raven black hair was only adorned by a crimson ribbon, beneath which
it had been thrust into a net, with a long thing that had once been
a curl on the shoulder of the white tumbled bodice worn over a gray
skirt which looked as if it had don