advantages of beauty
and station, but dignified and raised by the consciousness of purity,
cultivation, and high thoughts. The same look was there, modest yet
dignified, diffident yet self-possessed; and while he became
convinced that there sat the bride selected by the Earl of Byerdale
for his son, he was equally convinced that she was the person of all
others whose fate would be the most miserable in such an union.
At the same moment, too, his heart was moved by sensations that may be
very difficult accurately to describe. To talk of his being in love
with the fair girl before him would, in those days as in the present,
have been absurd; to say that he had remembered her with anything
like hope, would not be true, for he had not hoped in the slightest
degree, nor even dreamed of hope. But what he had done was this--he
had thought of her often and long; he had recollected the few hours
spent in her society with greater pleasure than any he had known in
life; he had remembered her as the most beautiful person he had ever
seen--and indeed to him she was so; for not only were her features,
and her form, and her complexion, all beautiful according to the
rules of art, but they were beautiful also according to that
modification of beauty which best suited his own taste. The
expression, too, of her countenance--and she had much expression of
countenance when conversing with any one she liked--was beautiful and
varying; and the grace of her movements and the calm quietness of her
carriage were of the kind which is always most pleasing to a high and
cultivated mind.
He had recollected her, then, as the most beautiful creature he had
ever seen; but there was also a good deal of imaginative interest
attached to the circumstances in which they had first met; and he
often thought over them with pleasure, as forming a little bright
spot in the midst of a somewhat dull and monotonous existence. In
short, all these memories made it impossible for him to feel towards
her as he did towards other women. There was admiration, and
interest, and high esteem.--It wanted, surely, but a little of being
love. One thing is very certain: Wilton would have heard that she
was about to be married to any one with no inconsiderable degree of
pain. It would have cost him a sigh; it would have made him feel a
deep regret. He would not have been in the slightest degree
disappointed, for hope being out of the question he expected nothing;
but still he might regret.
Now, however, when he