res
were formed to express peace of mind, serenity, and indifference to
the tinsel of wordly pleasure. Her locks, which were of shadowy gold,
divided on a brow of exquisite whiteness, like a gleam of broken and
pallid sunshine upon a hill of snow. The expression of the countenance
was in the last degree gentle, soft, timid, and feminine, and seemed
rather to shrink from the most casual look of a stranger than to court
his admiration. Something there was of a Madonna cast, perhaps the
result of delicate health, and of residence in a family where the
dispositions of the inmates were fiercer, more active, and energetic
than her own.

Yet her passiveness of disposition was by no means owing to an
indifferent or unfeeling mind. Left to the impulse of her own taste and
feelings, Lucy Ashton was peculiarly accessible to those of a romantic
cast. Her secret delight was in the old legendary tales of ardent
devotion and unalterable affection, chequered as they so often are with
strange adventures and supernatural horrors. This was her favoured
fairy realm, and here she erected her aerial palaces. But it was only
in secret that she laboured at this delusive though delightful
architecture. In her retired chamber, or in the woodland bower which
she had chosen for her own, and called after her name, she was in fancy
distributing the prizes at the tournament, or raining down influence
from her eyes on the valiant combatants: or she was wandering in the
wilderness with Una, under escort of the generous lion; or she was
identifying herself with the simple yet noble-minded Miranda in the isle
of wonder and enchantment.

But in her exterior relations to things of this world, Lucy willingly
received the ruling impulse from those around her. The alternative was,
in general, too indifferent to her to render resistance desirable, and
she willingly found a motive for decision in the opinion of her friends
which perhaps she might have sought for in vain in her own choice.
Every reader must have observed in some family of his acquaintance some
individual of a temper soft and yielding, who, mixed with stronger and
more ardent minds, is borne along by the will of others, with as little
power of opposition as the flower which is flung into a running stream.
It usually happens that such a compliant and easy disposition, which
resigns itself without murmur to the guidance of others, becomes the
darling of those to whose inclinations its own seem to