rous frankness of her beaming eyes was gone; she no longer met you
with a look of full and fearless confidence: the cordial warmth, the
fresh and buoyant sallies of her ready wit, had departed, and in their
place was a timid reserve, a cautious, shrinking delicacy, blended with
a quiet but watchful spirit of repartee, that flattered by the very
degree of attention it betokened.

Perhaps our reader will not feel pleased with us for saying that she was
more beautiful now than before; that intercourse with the world, dress,
manners, the tact of society, the stimulus of admiration, the assured
sense of her own charms, however they may have detracted from the moral
purity of her nature, had yet invested her appearance with higher and
more striking fascinations. Her walk, her courtesy, the passing motion
of her hand, her attitude as she sat, were perfect studies of grace.
Not a trace was left of her former manner; all was ease, pliancy,
and elegance. Two persons were seated near her: one of these, our old
acquaintance, George Onslow; the other was a dark, sallow-visaged man,
whose age might have been anything from thirty-five to sixty, for, while
his features were marked by the hard lines of time, his figure had all
the semblance of youth. By a broad blue ribbon round his neck he wore
the decoration of Saint Nicholas, and the breast of his coat was covered
with stars, crosses, and orders of half the courts of Europe. This was
Prince Midchekoff, whose grandfather, having taken an active part in
the assassination of the Emperor Paul, had never been reconciled to
the Imperial family, and was permitted to reside in a kind of honorable
banishment out of Russia; a punishment which he bore up under, it was
said, with admirable fortitude. His fortune was reputed to be immense,
and there was scarcely a capital of Europe in which he did not possess
a residence. The character of his face was peculiar, for while the
forehead and eyes were intellectual and candid, the lower jaw and mouth
revealed his Calmuck origin, an expression of intense, unrelenting
cruelty being the impression at once conveyed by the thin, straight,
compressed lips, and the long, projecting chin, seeming even longer
from the black-pointed beard he wore. There was nothing vulgar or
common-place about him; he never could have passed unobserved anywhere,
and yet he was equally far from the type of high birth. His manners
were perfectly well bred; and although he spoke se