Coming home to his dear Castlewood in the third year of his academical
course, (wherein he had now obtained some distinction, his Latin Poem
on the death of the Duke of Gloucester, Princess Anne of Denmark's son,
having gained him a medal, and introduced him to the society of the
University wits,) Esmond found his little friend and pupil Beatrix grown
to be taller than her mother, a slim and lovely young girl, with cheeks
mantling with health and roses: with eyes like stars shining out
of azure, with waving bronze hair clustered about the fairest young
forehead ever seen: and a mien and shape haughty and beautiful, such
as that of the famous antique statue of the huntress Diana--at one time
haughty, rapid, imperious, with eyes and arrows that dart and kill.
Harry watched and wondered at this young creature, and likened her in
his mind to Artemis with the ringing bow and shafts flashing death upon
the children of Niobe; at another time she was coy and melting as
Luna shining tenderly upon Endymion. This fair creature, this lustrous
Phoebe, was only young as yet, nor had nearly reached her full splendor:
but crescent and brilliant, our young gentleman of the University, his
head full of poetical fancies, his heart perhaps throbbing with desires
undefined, admired this rising young divinity; and gazed at her (though
only as at some "bright particular star," far above his earth) with
endless delight and wonder. She had been a coquette from the earliest
times almost, trying her freaks and jealousies, her wayward frolics and
winning caresses, upon all that came within her reach; she set her women
quarrelling in the nursery, and practised her eyes on the groom as she
rode behind him on the pillion.

She was the darling and torment of father and mother. She intrigued with
each secretly; and bestowed her fondness and withdrew it, plied them
with tears, smiles, kisses, cajolements;--when the mother was angry, as
happened often, flew to the father, and sheltering behind him, pursued
her victim; when both were displeased, transferred her caresses to the
domestics, or watched until she could win back her parents' good graces,
either by surprising them into laughter and good-humor, or appeasing
them by submission and artful humility. She was saevo laeta negotio,
like that fickle goddess Horace describes, and of whose "malicious joy"
a great poet of our own has written so nobly--who, famous and heroic as
he was, was not strong enough t