e's active
fingers, and exhibited her beautiful head.

It was, indeed, a beautiful head! exquisite in shape, with masses
of light-brown hair folded round it. The little rosy ear peeped out,
forming the commencement of that rare and dainty curve of chin and
throat, so pleasant to an artist's eye. A beauty to be lingered over
among all other beauties. Then the delicately outlined mouth, the lips
folded over in a lovely gravity, that seemed ready each moment to melt
away into smiles. Her nose--but who would destroy the romance of a
beautiful woman by such an allusion? Of course, Mrs. Rothesay had a
nose; but it was so entirely in harmony with the rest of her face,
that you never thought whether it were Roman, Grecian, or aquiline. Her
eyes--

"She has two eyes, so soft and brown--
She gives a side-glance and looks down."

But was there a soul in this exquisite form? You never asked--you hardly
cared! You took the thing for granted; and whether it were so or not,
you felt that the world, and yourself especially, ought to be thankful
for having looked at so lovely an image, if only to prove that earth
still possessed such a thing as ideal beauty; and you forgave all the
men, in every age, that have run mad for the same. Sometimes, perchance,
you would pause a moment, to ask if this magic were real, and remember
the calm holy airs that breathed from the presence of some woman,
beautiful only in her soul. But then you never would have looked upon
Sybilla Rothesay as a woman at all--only a flesh-and-blood fairy--a
Venus de Medici transmuted from the stone.

Perhaps this was the way in which Captain Angus Rothesay contrived to
fall in love with Sybilla Hyde; until he woke from the dream to find his
seraph of beauty--a baby-bride, pouting like a vexed child, because,
in their sudden elopement, she had neither wedding-bonnet nor Brussels
veil!

And now she was a baby-mother; playing with her infant as, not so very
long since, she had played with her doll; twisting its tiny fingers, and
making them close tightly round her own, which were quite as elfin-like,
comparatively. For Mrs. Rothesay's surpassing beauty included beautiful
hands and feet; a blessing which Nature--often niggardly in her
gifts--does not always extend to pretty women, but bestows it on those
who have infinitely more reason to be thankful for the boon.

"See, nurse Elspie," said Mrs. Rothesay, laughing in her childish way;
"see how fast the litt