s one song of joy and gladness. The very clouds as
they swept past threw new and varied light over the scene, as though to
show fresh effects of beauty on the landscape,--the streams went by in
circling eddies, like smiles upon a lovely face,--and now all was sad
and crape-covered! "What has wrought this dreary change?" thought I; "is
it possible that the cold looks of a young woman, good-looking, I grant,
but no regular downright beauty after all, can have altered the aspect
of the whole world to you? Are you so poor a creature in yourself,
Potts, so beggared in your own resources, so barren in all the
appliances of thought and reflection, that if your companion, whoever
she or he may be, sulk, you must needs reflect the humor? Are you
nothing but the mirror that displays what is placed before it?"

I set myself deliberately to scan the profile beside me; her black veil,
drawn down on the side furthest from me, formed a sort of background,
which displayed her pale features more distinctly. All about the brow
and orbit was beautifully regular, but the mouth was, I fancied, severe;
there was a slight retraction of the upper lip that seemed to imply
over-firmness, and then the chin was deeply indented,--"a sign," Lavater
says, "of those who have a will of their own." "Potts," thought I, "she
'd rule you,--that's a nature would speedily master yours. I don't think
there's any softness either, any of that yielding gentleness there, that
makes the poetry of womanhood; besides, I suspect she's worldly,--those
sharply cut nostrils are very worldly! She is, in fact,"--and here I
unconsciously uttered my thoughts aloud,--"she is, in fact, one to say,
'Potts, how much have you got a-year? Let us have it in figures.'"

"So you are still ruminating over the life of that interesting
creature," said she, laying down her book to laugh; "and shall I
confess, I lay awake half the night, inventing incidents and imagining
situations for him."

"For whom?" said I, innocently.

"For Potts, of course. I cannot get him out of my head such as I first
fancied he might be, and I see now, by your unconscious allusion to him,
that he has his place in your imagination also."

"You mistake, Miss Herbert,--at least you very much misapprehend my
conception of that character. The Potts family has a high historic
tradition. Sir Constantine Potts was cup-bearer to Henry H., and I
really see no reason why ridicule should attach to one who may be, most