Cousin Maude

Nellie, too, was well beloved, but he soon grew weary of her

company, for she seldom talked of anything save herself and the

compliments which were given to her youthful beauty. And Nellie, at

the age of eighteen, was beautiful, if that can be called beauty

which is void of heart or soul or intellect. She was very small, and

the profusion of golden curls which fell about her neck and

shoulders gave her the appearance of being younger than she really

was. Her features were almost painfully regular, her complexion

dazzlingly brilliant, while her large blue eyes had in them a

dreamy, languid expression exceedingly attractive to those who

looked for nothing beyond--no inner chamber where dwell the graces

which make a woman what she ought to be. Louis' artist eye,

undeveloped though it was, acknowledged the rare loveliness of

Nellie's face. She would make a beautiful picture, he thought; but

for the noble, the good, the pure, he turned to the dark-eyed Maude,

who was as wholly unlike her stepsister as it was possible for her

to be. The one was a delicate blonde, the other a decided brunette,

with hair and eyes of deepest black. Her complexion, too, was dark,

but tinged with a beautiful red, which Nellie would gladly have

transferred to her own paler cheek. It was around the mouth,

however, the exquisitely shaped mouth, and white even teeth, that

Maude's principal beauty lay, and the bright smile which lit up her

features when at all animated in conversation would have made a

plain face handsome. There were some who gave her the preference,

saying there was far more beauty in her clear, beautiful eyes and

sunny smile than in the dollish face of Nellie, who treated such

remarks with the utmost scorn. She knew that she was beautiful. She

had known it all her life--for had she not been told so by her

mirror, her father, her schoolmates, her Aunt Kelsey, and more than

all by J.C. De Vere, the elegant young man whom she had met in

Rochester, where she had spent the winter preceding the summer of

which we are writing, and which was four and one-half years after

Matty's death.

Greatly had the young lady murmured on her return against the dreary

old house and lonely life at Laurel Hill, which did indeed present a

striking contrast to the city gayeties in which she had been

mingling. Even the cozy little chamber which the kind-hearted Maude

had fitted up for her with her own means was pronounced heathenish

and old-fashioned, while Maude herself was constantly taunted with

being countryfied and odd.