s, white and polished as
marble. It would be an impossible task to describe her large dark gray
eyes, fringed with their thick lashes, and beaming with angelic
sweetness; her coral lips, with their gentle smile, gave to her eyes the
indefinable charm that her affable and winning mode of expressing
herself derived from their mild and angelic expression of approving
goodness. We will not farther delay the reader by describing the
perfection of her figure, nor dwell upon the distinguished air which
marked her whole appearance. She wore a white crape dress, trimmed with
the natural flowers of the camellia, intermixed with its own rich green
leaves. Here and there a diamond sparkled among the waxy petals, as if a
dewdrop fresh from its native skies had fallen there. A garland of the
same flowers, equally ornamented with precious stones, was placed with
infinite grace upon her fair and open brow.

The peculiar style of the Countess Sarah Macgregor's beauty served to
set off the fair feminine loveliness of her companion. Though turned
thirty-five years of age, Sarah looked much younger. Nothing appears to
preserve the body more effectually from all the attacks of sickness or
decay than a cold-hearted, egotistical disregard of every one but
ourselves; it encrusts the body with a cold, icy covering, which alike
resists the inroads of bodily or mental wear and tear. To this cause may
be ascribed the wonderful preservation of Countess Sarah's appearance.

The lady whose name we last mentioned wore a dress of pale amber watered
silk, beneath a crape tunic of the same colour. A simple wreath of the
dark leaves of the _Pyrus Japonicus_ encircled her head, and harmonised
admirably with the bandeaux of raven hair it confined. This classically
severe mode of head-dress gave to the profile of this imperious woman
the character and resemblance of an antique statue. Many persons,
mistaking their real cast of countenance, imagine some peculiar vocation
delineated in their traits. Thus one man, who fancies he possesses a
warlike air, assumes the warrior; another imagines

"His eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,"

marks him out as a poet; instantly he turns down his shirt-collar,
adopts poetical language, and writes himself poet. So the self-imagined
conspirator wastes days and hours in pondering over mighty deeds he
feels called upon to do. The politician, upon the same terms, bores the
world and his friends with his perpetual outpourin