passionate fancies that tripped, on tiptoe, half
winged, through her thoughts. She was a creature to make your blood
bound in your bosom,--to take you entirely off your feet, and fancy,
for the moment, that your heels are quite as much entitled to dominion
as your head. Lovely too,--brilliant, if not absolutely perfect in
features--she kept you always in a sort of sunlight. She sung well,
talked well, danced well--was always in air--seemed never herself to
lack repose, and, it must be confessed, seldom suffered it to any body
else. Her dancing was the crowning grace and glory. She was no
Taglioni--not an Ellsler--I do not pretend that. But she was a born
artiste. Every motion was a study. Every look was life. Her form
subsided into the sweetest luxuriance of attitude, and rose into motion
with some such exquisite buoyancy, as would become Venus issuing from
the foam. Her very affectations were so naturally worn, that you at
length looked for them as essential to her charm. I confess--but no!
Why should I do anything so foolish?

Susannah was a very different creature. She was a fair girl--rather
pale, perhaps, when her features were in repose. She had rich soft
flaxen hair, and dark blue eyes. She looked rather than spoke. Her
words were few, her glances many. She was not necessarily silent in
silence. On the contrary, her very silence had frequently a
significance, taken with her looks, that needed no help from speech.
She seemed to look through you at a glance, yet there was a liquid
sweetness in her gaze, that disarmed it of all annoyance. If Emmeline
was the glory of the sunlight--Susannah was the sovereign of the shade.
If the song of the one filled you with exultation, that of the other
awakened all your tenderness. If Emmeline was the creature for the
dance,--Susannah was the wooing, beguiling Egeria, who could snatch you
from yourself in the moments of respite and repose. For my part, I
felt that I could spend all my mornings with the former, and all my
evenings with the latter. Susannah with her large, blue, tearful eyes,
and few, murmuring and always gentle accents, shone out upon me at
nightfall as that last star that watches in the vault of night for the
coming of the sapphire dawn.

So much for the damsels. And all these fancies, not to say feelings,
were the fruit of but three short days' acquaintance with their
objects. But these were days when thoughts travel merrily and
fast--wh