om whose hue and
shape might have rivalled hers who won Cymon to be wise,--[See Dryden's
poem of "Cymon and Iphigenia."]--a drawing which she herself had
secretly made of her lover, and which, though inartificially and even
rudely done, yet had caught the inspiration of memory, and breathed
the very features and air that were stamped already ineffaceably upon a
heart too holy for so sullied an idol. She gazed upon the portrait as
if it could answer her question of the original; and as she looked and
looked, her tears slowly ceased, and her innocent countenance relapsed
gradually into its usual and eloquent serenity. Never, perhaps, could
Lucy's own portrait have been taken at a more favourable moment, The
unconscious grace of her attitude; her dress loosened; the modest and
youthful voluptuousness of her beauty; the tender cheek to which the
virgin bloom, vanished for a while, was now all glowingly returning;
the little white soft hand on which that cheek leaned, while the other
contained the picture upon which her eyes fed; the half smile just
conjured to her full, red, dewy lips, and gone the moment after, yet
again restored,--all made a picture of such enchanting loveliness that
we question whether Shakspeare himself could have fancied an earthly
shape more meet to embody the vision of a Miranda or a Viola. The quiet
and maiden neatness of the apartment gave effect to the charm; and there
was a poetry even in the snowy furniture of the bed, the shutters partly
unclosed and admitting a glimpse of the silver moon, and the solitary
lamp just contending with the purer ray of the skies, and so throwing a
mixed and softened light around the chamber.

She was yet gazing on the drawing, when a faint stream of music stole
through the air beneath her window, and it gradually rose till the sound
of a guitar became distinct and clear, suiting with, not disturbing, the
moonlit stillness of the night. The gallantry and romance of a
former day, though at the time of our story subsiding, were not quite
dispelled; and nightly serenades under the casements of a distinguished
beauty were by no means of unfrequent occurrence. But Lucy, as the music
floated upon her ear, blushed deeper and deeper, as if it had a dearer
source to her heart than ordinary gallantry; and raising herself on one
arm from her incumbent position, she leaned forward to catch the sound
with a greater and more unerring certainty.

After a prelude of some moments a