eatures that, without having the soft and fluent
graces of childhood, were yet regular and striking. His dark-green
shooting-dress, with the belt and pouch, the cap, with its gold tassel
set upon his luxuriant curls, which had the purple gloss of the raven's
plume, blended perhaps something prematurely manly in his own tastes,
with the love of the fantastic and the picturesque which bespeaks the
presiding genius of the proud mother. The younger son had scarcely told
his ninth year; and the soft, auburn ringlets, descending half-way down
the shoulders; the rich and delicate bloom that exhibits at once the
hardy health and the gentle fostering; the large deep-blue eyes; the
flexile and almost effeminate contour of the harmonious features;
altogether made such an ideal of childlike beauty as Lawrence had loved
to paint or Chantrey model. And the daintiest cares of a mother, who,
as yet, has her darling all to herself--her toy, her plaything--were
visible in the large falling collar of finest cambric, and the blue
velvet dress with its filigree buttons and embroidered sash.

Both the boys had about them the air of those whom Fate ushers blandly
into life; the air of wealth, and birth, and luxury, spoiled and
pampered as if earth had no thorn for their feet, and heaven not a wind
to visit their young cheeks too roughly. The mother had been extremely
handsome; and though the first bloom of youth was now gone, she had
still the beauty that might captivate new love--an easier task than
to retain the old. Both her sons, though differing from each other,
resembled her; she had the features of the younger; and probably any one
who had seen her in her own earlier youth would have recognized in that
child's gay yet gentle countenance the mirror of the mother when a girl.
Now, however, especially when silent or thoughtful, the expression of
her face was rather that of the elder boy;--the cheek, once so rosy was
now pale, though clear, with something which time had given, of pride
and thought, in the curved lip and the high forehead. One who could have
looked on her in her more lonely hours, might have seen that the pride
had known shame, and the thought was the shadow of the passions of fear
and sorrow.

But now as she read those hasty, brief, but well-remembered
characters--read as one whose heart was in her eyes--joy and triumph
alone were visible in that eloquent countenance. Her eyes flashed,
her breast heaved; and at length, cl