"Thou sayest true, Janet," said the young and beautiful Countess,

stopping suddenly from her tripping race of enraptured delight, and

looking at herself from head to foot in a large mirror, such as she had

never before seen, and which, indeed, had few to match it even in the

Queen's palace--"thou sayest true, Janet!" she answered, as she saw,

with pardonable self-applause, the noble mirror reflect such charms as

were seldom presented to its fair and polished surface; "I have more of

the milk-maid than the countess, with these cheeks flushed with haste,

and all these brown curls, which you laboured to bring to order,

straying as wild as the tendrils of an unpruned vine. My falling ruff is

chafed too, and shows the neck and bosom more than is modest 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."




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