been calculated to
inspire admiration, not all unmixed with awe, rather than tenderness or
love. The daughter, on the other hand, was one whose every gesture, smile,
word, glance, bespoke that passion latent in itself, which it awakened in
the bosom of all beholders.

Slightly above the middle stature, and with a waist of scarce a span's
circumference, her form was exquisitely full and rounded; the sweeping
outlines of her snow-white and dimpled arms, bare to the shoulders, and
set off by many strings of pearl, which were themselves scarcely whiter
than the skin on which they rested; the swan-like curvature of the
dazzling neck; the wavy and voluptuous development of her bust, shrouded
but not concealed by the plaits of her white linen _stola_, fastened on
either shoulder by a clasp of golden fillagree, and gathered just above
her hips by a gilt zone of the Grecian fashion; the small and shapely
foot, which peered out with its jewelled sandal under her gold-fringed
draperies; combined to present to the eye a very incarnation of that ideal
loveliness, which haunts enamored poets in their dreams, the girl just
bursting out of girlhood, the glowing Hebe of the soft and sunny south.
But if her form was lovely, how shall the pen of mortal describe the wild
romantic beauty of her soul-speaking features. The rich redundancy of her
dark auburn hair, black where the shadows rested on it as the sable locks
of night, but glittering out wherever a wandering ray glanced on its
glossy surface like the bright tresses of Aurora. The broad and marble
forehead, the pencilled brows, and the large liquid eyes fraught with a
mild and lustrous languor; the cheeks, pale in their wonted mood as
alabaster, yet eloquent at times with warm and passionate blushes. The
lips, redder than aught on earth which shares both hue and softness; and,
more than all, the deep and indescribable expression which genius prints
on every lineament of those, who claim that rarest and most godlike of
endowments.

She was a thing to dream of, not describe; to dream of in some faint and
breathless eve of early summer, beside the margin of some haunted
streamlet, beneath the shade of twilight boughs in which the fitful breeze
awakes that whispering melody, believed by the poetic ancients to be the
chorus of the wood-nymph; to dream of and adore--even as she was adored by
him who sat beside her, and watched each varying expression, that swept
across her speaking featu