Emily still gazed on the countenance, examining its features, but she
knew not where to detect the charm that captivated her attention,
and inspired sentiments of such love and pity. Dark brown hair played
carelessly along the open forehead; the nose was rather inclined to
aquiline; the lips spoke in a smile, but it was a melancholy one; the
eyes were blue, and were directed upwards with an expression of peculiar
meekness, while the soft cloud of the brow spoke of the fine sensibility
of the temper.
Emily was roused from the musing mood into which the picture had thrown
her, by the closing of the garden gate; and, on turning her eyes to
the window, she saw Valancourt coming towards the chateau. Her spirits
agitated by the subjects that had lately occupied her mind, she felt
unprepared to see him, and remained a few moments in the chamber to
recover herself. When she met him in the parlour, she was struck with the change that
appeared in his air and countenance since they had parted in Rousillon,
which twilight and the distress she suffered on the preceding evening
had prevented her from observing. But dejection and languor disappeared,
for a moment, in the smile that now enlightened his countenance, on
perceiving her. 'You see,' said he, 'I have availed myself of the
permission with which you honoured me--of bidding YOU farewell, whom I
had the happiness of meeting only yesterday.'
Emily smiled faintly, and, anxious to say something, asked if he had
been long in Gascony. 'A few days only,' replied Valancourt, while a
blush passed over his cheek. 'I engaged in a long ramble after I had the
misfortune of parting with the friends who had made my wanderings among
the Pyrenees so delightful.'
A tear came to Emily's eye, as Valancourt said this, which he observed;
and, anxious to draw off her attention from the remembrance that had
occasioned it, as well as shocked at his own thoughtlessness, he began
to speak on other subjects, expressing his admiration of the chateau,
and its prospects. Emily, who felt somewhat embarrassed how to support
a conversation, was glad of such an opportunity to continue it on
indifferent topics. They walked down to the terrace, where Valancourt
was charmed with the river scenery, and the views over the opposite
shores of Guienne.
As he leaned on the wall of the terrace, watching the rapid current of
the Garonne, 'I was a few weeks ago,' said he, 'at the source of this
noble river; I had not then the happiness of knowing you, or I should
have regretted your absence--it was a scene so exactly suited to
your taste. It rises in a part of the Pyrenees, still wilder and more
sublime, I think, than any we passed in the way to Rousillon.' He then
described its fall among the precipices of the mountains, where its
waters, augmented by the streams that descend from the snowy summits
around, rush into the Vallee d'Aran, between whose romantic heights it
foams along, pursuing its way to the north west till it emerges upon the
plains of Languedoc. Then, washing the walls of Tholouse, and turning
again to the north west, it assumes a milder character, as it fertilizes
the pastures of Gascony and Guienne, in its progress to the Bay of
Biscay.