Page:Lady Anne Granard 2.pdf/74

72 "Is he remarkably handsome, about twenty three or four, with short mustachios, and very curly dark hair, and fine teeth?" "Oh! yes, sir, that is the exact description." "Poor fellow! I will see him to-morrow, and must try to do him all the good I can. It is no wonder he is obliged to take refuge in England; between France and Germany, Italy would be swallowed up, were it not for the stand we are making in Calabria." From this time the poor foreigner, generally designated "the French teacher at the boarding-school," became much too busy to be melancholy. In every house there was some one person who wanted to learn Italian, in every party his presence was a desideratum. Lady Anne considered him a first-rate lion—her husband held him as a friend. Alas! in a short time his fair sister felt him to be something far dearer! There was much in the situation of the parties to excuse their imprudence. Miss Graham, left an orphan at an early age, found in a brother, who was ten years her senior, all the tenderness of a parent, and the companionship of a friend, possessing, like herself, a taste for the beautiful in art, and nature, and that poetry of perception, classed with the romantic, in those minds incapable of distinguishing its excellence. Save for external inconveniences, and the dangers that hovered around them, their sojourn in Italy would have been one long day of pure delight—the revel of the mind in Nature's paradise and Memory's storehouse;