person,

"Grim-visaged war had smooth'd his wrinkled front."

'Twas a subject for a painter, that delicate and blooming girl, her
auburn hair hanging in careless grace on each side of her white
forehead, while her eyes,

"That might have sooth'd a tiger's rage,
Or thaw'd the cold heart of a conqueror,"

were fixed with absorbed interest on the stern and rigid countenance
which she reflected had been, as it were, a thousand times darkened with
the smoke of the grisly battle-field. But I must not forget that there
are others in the room; and among them, standing at a little distance,
is Lord De la Zouch, one of Mr. Aubrey's neighbors in Yorkshire.
Apparently he is listening to a brother peer talking to him very
earnestly about the expected division; but Lord De la Zouch's eye is
fixed on you, lovely Kate--and how little can you imagine what is
passing through his mind! It has just occurred to him that his sudden
arrangement for young Delamere--his only son and heir, come up the day
before from Oxford--to call for him about half-past ten, and take his
place in Mrs. Aubrey's drawing-room, while Lord De la Zouch goes down to
the House--may be attended with certain consequences! He is in truth
speculating on the effect of your beauty bursting suddenly on his
son--who has not seen you for nearly two years! all this gives him
anxiety--but not painful anxiety--for, dear Kate, he knows that your
forehead would wear the ancient coronet of the De la Zouches with grace
and dignity. But Delamere is as yet too young--and if he gets the image
of Catherine Aubrey into his head, it will, fears his father, instantly
cast into the shade and displace all the stern visages of those old
geometers, poets, orators, historians, philosophers, and statesmen, who
ought, in Lord De la Zouch's and his son's tutor's judgment, to occupy
exclusively the head of the aforesaid Delamere for some five years to
come. That youngster--happy fellow!--frank, high-spirited, and
enthusiastic--and handsome to boot--was heir to an ancient title and
very great estates; all that his father had considered in looking out
for an alliance was--youth, health, beauty, blood--here they all
were;--and _fortune_ too--bah! what did it signify to his son--but at
any rate 'twas not to be thought of for some years.

"Suppose," said he, aloud, though in a musing manner, "one were to
say--twenty-four"----

"_Twenty-four!_" echoed his companion, with amazement; "my