Page:Romance & Reality 1.pdf/10

4 less from impulse; custom takes the place of energy, and feelings, no longer powerfully excited, are proportionably quiet in reaction. But youth, balancing itself upon hope, is for ever in extremes; its expectations are continually aroused only to be baffled; and disappointment, like a summer shower, is violent in proportion to its brevity. Young she was—but nineteen, that pleasantest of ages, just past the blushing, bridling, bewildering coming out, when a courtesy and a compliment are equally embarrassing; when one half the evening is spent in thinking what to do and say, and the other half in repenting what has been said and done. Pretty she was—very pretty: a profusion of dark, dancing ringlets, that caught the sunbeams and then kept them prisoners; beautiful dark-grey eyes with large black pupils, very mirrors of her meaning; that long curled eye-lash, which gives a softness nothing else can give; features small, but Grecian in their regularity; a slight delicate figure, an ankle fit for a fairy, a hand fit for a duchess,—no marvel Emily was the reigning beauty of the county. Sprung from one of its oldest families, its heiress too, the idol of her uncle and aunt, who had brought