terary purposes, and books without
number, and of all descriptions, were lying around them--here was a pile
of novels, amongst which, the titles of "The Novice of St. Dominick,"
"Ida of Athens," "The Wild Irish Girl," &c. &c. could be
discerned--there was a heap of "Travels," composed of "Italy," "France
in 1816," and others:--a couple of volumes, entitled "Life and Times of
Salvator Rosa," were reposing in graceful dignity on the open lid of a
portmanteau. Several maids were exerting all their activity to get every
thing properly arranged; all was bustle and preparation.

Adjoining the chamber was a boudoir, furnished likewise in the most
romantic manner, in which sat a lady of even a more romantic appearance
than that of either of the apartments. How shall we describe her? She
certainly (we must tell the truth, and shame you know whom) did not seem
to be of that delightful age, in which a due regard to veracity would
allow us to apply to her the line of the poet, "Le printemps dans sa
fleur sur son visage est peint." Her cheeks, to be sure, were deeply
tinged with a roseate hue, but it was not that with which nature loves
to paint the face of spring; the colour proved too palpably, that it had
been placed there by the exercise of those "curious arts" with which the
sex are enabled to revive dim charms, "and triumph in the bloom of
fifty-five." Her dress was romantic in the extreme. Of the unity of
_time_, at all events, it was in direct violation, for its "gay rainbow
colours," and modish arrangement, were out of all keeping with her
matronly age. One would easily have inferred from it that she was fully
impressed with the conviction, that the years which had glided over her
head, were not of the old-fashioned kind that contain twelve months, or
at least, that she did not consider the lapse of time as at all
calculated to impair the attractions of her physiognomy, however
prejudicial its effect might be upon the faces of the rest of the female
part of the creation. In her countenance there was such an expression of
blended affectation and self-complacency, that it was impossible to look
upon it without feeling an inclination to smile. She was sitting near a
prettily ornamented writing-desk, surmounted by a mirror (in which, by
the way, she always found her greatest admirer), with her head reclining
on her open hand, her elbow resting on a volume which bore on its back
the appropriate title of "The Book of the Boudoir,"