silver Thames, alive with
steamboats ploughing, white sails bellying, and great ships carrying to
and fro the treasures of the globe. From this fair landscape and epitome
of commerce she retired each time with listless disdain; she was waiting
for somebody.

Yet she was one of those whom few men care to keep waiting. Rosa
Lusignan was a dark but dazzling beauty, with coal-black hair, and
glorious dark eyes, that seemed to beam with soul all day long; her
eyebrows, black, straightish, and rather thick, would have been majestic
and too severe, had the other features followed suit; but her black
brows were succeeded by long silky lashes, a sweet oval face, two
pouting lips studded with ivory, and an exquisite chin, as feeble as any
man could desire in the partner of his bosom. Person--straight, elastic,
and rather tall. Mind--nineteen. Accomplishments--numerous; a poor
French scholar, a worse German, a worse English, an admirable dancer,
an inaccurate musician, a good rider, a bad draughtswoman, a bad
hairdresser, at the mercy of her maid; a hot theologian, knowing
nothing, a sorry accountant, no housekeeper, no seamstress, a fair
embroideress, a capital geographer, and no cook.

Collectively, viz., mind and body, the girl we kneel to.

This ornamental member of society now glanced at the clock once more,
and then glided to the window for the fourth time. She peeped at the
side a good while, with superfluous slyness or shyness, and presently
she drew back, blushing crimson; then she peeped again, still more
furtively; then retired softly to her frame, and, for the first time,
set to work in earnest. As she plied her harpoon, smiling now, the large
and vivid blush, that had suffused her face and throat, turned from
carnation to rose, and melted away slowly, but perceptibly, and ever so
sweetly; and somebody knocked at the street door.

The blow seemed to drive her deeper into her work. She leaned over it,
graceful as a willow, and so absorbed, she could not even see the door
of the room open and Dr. Staines come in.

All the better: her not perceiving that slight addition to her furniture
gives me a moment to describe him.

A young man, five feet eleven inches high, very square shouldered and
deep chested, but so symmetrical, and light in his movements, that his
size hardly struck one at first. He was smooth shaved, all but a short,
thick, auburn whisker; his hair was brown. His features no more then
comely: the brow