hat I
had committed an error--only in regard to the _sex_ of the person who
was approaching. It was not a _he_! On the contrary, something so very
different that, as soon as I had succeeded in shading the sun-glare out
of my eyes; and obtained a fair view of the equestrian traveller, my
indifference was at an end: I beheld one of the loveliest apparitions
ever made manifest in female form, or I need scarcely add, in any other.
It was a young girl--certainly not over sixteen years of age--but with
a contour close verging upon womanhood. Her beauty was of that
character which cannot be set forth by a detailed description in words.
In true loveliness there is a harmony of the features that will not
suffer them to be considered apart; nor does the eye take note of any
one, to regard it as unique or characteristic. It is satisfied with the
_coup d'oeil_ of the whole--if I may be permitted the expression. Real
beauty needs not to be considered; it is acknowledged at a glance: eye
and heart, impressed with it at the same instant, search not to study
its details.

The impression made upon me by the first sight of this young girl, was
that of something soft and strikingly beautiful, of a glorious golden
hue--the reflection of bright amber-coloured hair on a blonde skin,
tinged with a hue of vermilion--something that imparted a sort of
luminous radiance divinely feminine. Even under the shadow of the
trees, this luminous radiance was apparent--as if the face had a _halo_
around it! The reader may smile at such exalted ideas, and deem them
the offspring of a romantic fancy; but had he looked, as I, into the
liquid depths of those large eyes, with their blue irides and darker
pupils; had he gazed upon that cheek tinted as with cochineal--those
lips shaming the hue of the rose--that throat of ivory white--those
golden tresses translucent in the sunlight--he would have felt as I,
that something _shone_ before his eyes--a face such as the Athenian
fancy has elaborated into an almost living reality, in the goddess
Cytherea. In short, it was the Venus of my fancy--the very ideal I had
imbibed from gazing upon many a picture of the Grecian goddess. The
prognostication of my friend had proved emphatically false. If it was
not _Venus_ I saw before me, it appeared her _counterpart_ in human
form!

And this fair creature was costumed in the simplest manner--almost
coarsely clad. A sleeved dress of homespun with a yellowish strip