'O Selina, Selina, can you be like this'?' exclaimed she; 'and to think of their saying I am like it! I am sure I hope one is as true as the other.'
Gerald drew his face into a horrible caricature of the expression in the portrait, and set his sister laughing.
'I hope I shall never see her If she has grown like it,' said she, sighing.
'I should take the stick to her if she was,' said Gerald.
'I am afraid it must be too true,' said Marian, 'or she would never allow herself to be posted up in this absurd way. I wonder Lord Marchmont allows it!'
'I'll tell you, Marian,' said the sympathising Gerald, 'if I had ten beauties for my wife--'
'Ten beauties! O, Gerald!'
'Well, one ten times as beautiful as Selina, I mean; I would cure her of vanity well; for I would tell her that, if she chose to have her picture drawn in this Book of Beauty, it should only be with a ring through her nose, and two stars tattooed on her cheeks.'
'And a very good plan too,' said Marian, laughing; 'but I am afraid poor Selina cannot be in such good hands. See, here are the impertinent people writing verses about her, as if they had any business to ask her what she is thinking about. Listen, Gerald; did you ever hear such stuff?'
'Lady, why that radiant smile,
Matching with that pensive brow,
Like sunbeams on some mountain pile
Glowing on solemn heights of snow?
'Lady, why that glance of thought,
Joined to that arch lip of mirth,
Like shade by fleecy cloudlet brought
Over some paradise of earth?
'Yea, thou may'st smile, the world for thee
Is opening all its fairest bowers;
Yet in that earnest face I see
These may not claim thy dearest hours.
'But for thy brow, thy smile we deem
The gladsome mirth of fairy sprite;
But for thy smile, thy mien would seem
Some angel's from the world of light.
'Yet laughing lip and thoughtful brow
Are depths and gleams of mortal life;
Angel and fay, of us art thou,
Then art a woman and a wife!'
'What would they have her to be? a husband?' said Gerald.
Here Caroline and Clara came hastily in, eager to see the portrait and read the verses, and very far were they from being able to imagine why she did not like the portrait. Caroline owned that there might be a little affectation, but she thought the beauty very considerable; and as to Clara, she was in raptures, saying she never _did_ see any one half so lovely. And as to the verses, they were the sweetest things she ever read; and she carried them off to show to Miss Morley, who fully sympathised with her. Marian found no one to share her opinion but Gerald and Lionel, and their criticisms were unsparingly extended to Lady Marchmont's features, as well as her expression, 'Such mincing lips! such untidy hair! Hollo! who has given her a black eye?' till they had not left her a single beauty.
Marian hoped the subject was quite forgotten, when she had hidden away the book under all her others: but the nest time there was a dinner-party, Mrs. Lyddell desired her to fetch it, to show to some one who knew Lady Marchmont. She took it up stairs again us soon as she could, but again and again was she obliged to bring it, and condemned to hear it talked over and admired. One day when she was going wearily and reluctantly up stairs, she was arrested by a call from Lionel, who was creeping up outside the balusters in a fashion which had no recommendation but its extreme difficulty and danger.
