Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 1.djvu/102

90, I surveyed it with considerable interest. There was a certain individuality in the features and expression that stamped it, at once, a successful likeness. The bright, blue eyes regarded the spectator with a kind of lurking drollery—you almost expected to see them wink; the lips—a little too voluptuously full—seemed ready to break into a smile; the warmly tinted cheeks were embellished with a luxuriant growth of reddish whiskers; while the bright chestnut hair, clustering in abundant, wavy curls, trespassed too much upon the forehead, and seemed to intimate that the owner thereof was prouder of his beauty than his intellect—as perhaps, he had reason to be;—and yet he looked no fool.

I had not had the portrait in my hands two minutes before the fair artist returned.

"Only some one come about the pictures," said she, in apology for her abrupt departure: "I told him to wait."

"I fear it will be considered an act of