Page:The Bride of Lindorf.pdf/3

450 best position for one lady’s velvets, and for the diamonds of another; she never interrupted those who were engaged–she never neglected those who were not; she took care that great people should be amused, and little people astonished. Moreover, she had an object in whatever she did–hence the incentive of interest was added to the pride of art.

The ball of to-night was given in honour of Pauline von Lindorf, her niece, who had just left the convent of St. Therese;–her education, as it is called, completed–that education which is but begun. How many cares–how much sorrow will it take to give the stern and bitter education of actual life! Pauline had just finished a waltz, having pleaded fatigue sooner than might have been expected from a foot so light–a form so fairy-like. She wore a robe of white satin, trimmed with swansdown; large pearls looped back the folds, and a band of diamonds scarcely restrained the bright hair that fell over her neck and shoulders in a thousand natural ringlets. It was of that rare rich golden so seldom seen–almost transparent, like rain with the sunbeams shining through it. At the first glance, that slight and graceful girl–with the rose on her cheek a little flushed by exercise, her glittering curls falling round her, golden as those of Hope–might have seemed the very ideal of youth and pleasure;–so much for the first glance, and how few go beyond! But whoso had looked closer would have seen that the soft red on the cheek was feverish; and there was that tremulous motion of the lip which bespeaks a heart ill at ease. At first she was looking down, and the long shadow of the curled eyelash rested on the rounded cheek; but there was something in the expression of the eyes, when raised, that caught even the most careless passer-by. They were large–unusually large–and of that violet blue which so rarely outlast the age of childhood, while they wore that wild and melancholy look whose shadows have a character of fate;–they are omens of the heart.

It was growing late, and a furtive gaze of the young baroness wandered more and more frequent round the rooms, and each time sought the ground with a deeper shade of disappointment. The Countess von Hermanstadt observed the look, and her own haughty brow curved with a scarcely perceptible frown. It was smoothed away instantly; and passing with a bland smile through the assembled groups, she left the ball-room.

The upper part of the magnificent house was in darkness, but in one window burned a still and lonely lamp. It lighted a small chamber sufficiently removed from the scene of the festival to be quite undisturbed by its tumult, though a distant sound of music floated in, ever and anon, at the open window. The chamber was panelled with old carved oak, and the arches thus formed were filled with books. Books, too, of all sizes, were piled on the ground, and papers and writing materials covered a table in the middle. There were also some pictures: a sombre landscape of Salvator Rosa–just a desolate rock, grey and barren, standing out amid old dark trees, where many a branch was bare with the lightning’s fiery visitings. Beneath them stood a single figure–pale, bareheaded, with long black hair that had not yet lost the motion of the wind. He looked what he was–an outlaw; the blood which he had shed, yet warm upon his hand, and his foot yet quivering with its flight for life or death. Near this was a dark, grave portrait by Velasquez: one of those faces whereon time has written the lesson of the prophet king–“All is vanity and vexation of spirit.” Others were