"Why, Mittie," cried he, "I hardly knew you, you have grown so handsome
and stately. I never saw any one so altered in my life--a perfect Juno.
I want to introduce my friend to you--a noble hearted, generous,
princely spirited fellow. A true Virginian, rather reckless with regard
to expenditure, perhaps, but extravagance is a kingly fault--I like it.
He is a passionate admirer of beauty, too, Mittie, and his manners are
perfectly irresistible. I shall be proud if he admires you, for I assure
you his admiration is a compliment of which any maiden may be proud."

While he was speaking, Clinton followed the beckoning motion of his
hand, and approached the bridge. It is impossible to describe the ease
and grace of his motions, or the wild charm imparted to his countenance
by the long, dark, shining, back-flowing locks, that softened their
haughty outline. His hair, eye-lashes and eye-brows were of deep, raven
black, but his eyes were a dark blue, a union singularly striking, and
productive of wonderful expression. As he came nearer and nearer, and
Mittie felt those dark blue, black shaded eyes riveted on her face, with
a look of unmistakable admiration, she remembered the words of her
brother, and the consciousness of beauty, for the first time, gave her a
sensation of pride and pleasure. She was too proud to be vain--and what
cared she for gifts, destined, like pearls, to be cast before an
unvaluing herd? The young doctor was the only young man whose admiration
she had ever thought worthy to secure, and having met from him only cold
politeness, she had lately felt for him only bitterness and dislike.
Living as she had done in a kind of cold abstraction, enjoying only the
pleasures of intellect, in all the sufficiency of self, it was a matter
of indifference to her what people thought of her. She felt so
infinitely above them, looking down like the aeronaut, from a colder,
more rarefied atmosphere, upon objects lessened to meanness by her own
elevation.

She could never look down on such a being as Bryant Clinton. Her first
thought was--"Will he dare to look down on me?" There was so much pride,
tempered by courtesy, such an air of lofty breeding, softened by grace,
so much intellectual power and sleeping passion in his face, that she
felt the contact of a strong, controlling spirit, a will to which her
own might be constrained to bow.

They walked to the house together, while Louis gave directions about the
horses, and h