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wide white forehead and delicately fashioned ear. He had a beautifully arched brow, heavily pencilled, within which a glittering black eye, too deep set, gleamed forth with unaccountable attraction. His nose was straight, small, but full of nerve. You would never guess from that handsome, firm-set mouth of his, where decision and resolution played about the cherry lips and dimpled chin, that he would have proved the coward and run from duty and from danger. No; but then Thornton Rush was made up of contradictions. His mental and moral, like his physical organization, was full of angularities, discrepancies, and unharmonious combinations. He could be gentle as the dove, but fierce as the tiger; kind and confiding as any child, but cruel and deceitful as Lucifer transformed. So opposite qualities are seldom found combined. The most brave men are often the most gentle; the most trustful are frank and open-hearted. To parody Byron's eulogy on "The wondrous three," Nature has formed but one such--hush! She broke the die in moulding Thornton Rush. What do you say? Althea and Thornton married and not one word about the courtship, that most interesting of all portions of a love-history! It was the tragedy of "the spider and the fly" enacted over again. We would but shudder to watch that wicked, sly, patient tarantula, coaxing, flattering, urging the poor little fly, whose bright wings are singed with his hot breath, and whose wonderful eyes are held fast by the fascination of his scintillant, unrelenting gaze. It is to be hoped, dear reader, that you are not of that kind who love to gloat over horrors. If you are, you must turn to some modern journal of civilization which is able to satisfy you completely. But Althea and Thornton are not married yet, they are only going to be. After the lapse of a quarter of a century Duncan Lisle, for the second time, attended commencement exercises at Troy Female Seminary. Twenty-five years is but a dot upon Time's voluminous scroll, yet in that brief space has been crowded infinite change. Madame X---- having retired from the school of education and from the stage of life, has been succeeded first by Madame Y----, and again by Mademoiselle de V----. More than half the young ladies who had graduated with Della and Ellice, who had looked like angels in simple white and blue, had lain down the burthens of life, and were sleeping peacefully here and there. Duncan Lisl
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