cture, the lady--evidently English, a pensive blonde, with
large and most sweet blue eyes curtained by the longest lashes,
regular and refined features suggestive of pure blood, budding lips
full of sensibility, a chin and brow that showed intellect as well as
lineage, and cheeks touched with the young rose's tint--was as a
beautiful _debutante_, the flower of rich drawing-rooms, in her first
season: one white moss-rosebud in her smoothly-braided hair; her
dimpled, round, white shoulders left to their own adornment; and for
jewels, only one opal on her ripening bosom;--as much of her dress as
was shown was the simple white bodice of pure maidenhood.

In the next, she had passed an interval of trial, for her courage, her
patience, and her pride,--a very few years, perhaps, but enough to
bestow that haughty, defiant glance, and fix those matchless features
in an almost sneer. No longer was her fair head bowed, her eyes
downcast, in shrinking diffidence; but erect and commanding, she
looked some tyranny, or insolence, or malice, in the face, to look it
down. Jewels encircled her brow, and a bouquet of pearls was happy on
her fuller bosom.

Still a few years further on,--and how changed! "So have I seen a
rose," says that Shakspeare of the pulpit, old Jeremy Taylor, when it
has "bowed the head and broke its stalk; and at night, having lost
some of its leaves and all its beauty, it has fallen into the portion
of weeds and outworn faces." Alas, Farewell, and Nevermore sighed from
those hollow cheeks, those woebegone eyes, those pallid lips, that
willow-like long hair, and the sad vesture of the forsaken Dido.

So with the child. At first, a rosy, careless, curly-pate of three
years or so,--wonder-eyed and eager, all spring and joyance, and
beautiful as Love.

Then pale and pain-fretted, heavy-eyed and weary, feebly half-lying in
a great chair, still,--an unheeded locket scarce held by his thin
fingers, his forehead wrinkled with cruel twinges, the sweet bowed
lines of his lips twisted in whimpering puckers, the curls upon his
vein-traced temples unnaturally bright, as with clamminess,--a painful
picture for a mother's eyes!

But not tragic, like the last; for there the boy had grown. Nine years
had deepened for his clustered curls their hue of golden brown, and
set a seal of anxious thought upon the cold, pale surface of his
intellectual brow, and traced his mouth about with lines of a martyr's
resignation, and filled h