Page:Tragical history of Jane Arnold (1).pdf/4

 was free from the enslaving power of love. Her beauty had, indeed, attracted many suitors but none of them had succeeded in gaining the affections of the youthful maid. Lubin, her only brother was in his twenty-fourth year, and was as much endowed with museulinemasculine [sic], as his sister was with feminine beauty. Lucy and Annetta might both be entitled to the denomination of pretty agreeable girls, but no farther.

About two miles distant from farmer Arnold, resided a Mr Percival, who having been many years a woollen draper in the city of London, had accumulated a decent fortune, retired, with his daughter Rosetta who, alter her mother’s death, had been his house-keeper, to the pleasant village of Rosewood, where they inhabited a small though neat mansion, built in the cottage style, and surrounded by a beauteous garden, bounded on the western side by a luxuriant orchard, and on the eastern by a meandering rivulet, which flowed in gentle murmers: while the distant clacking of the mill, and a deep sounding water-fall, added to the rural beauties of the scene.

Next to the fair Jane, Rosetta was esteemed the handsomest girl in that part of the country. She was in her nineteenth year, and her truly amiable manners soon gained her the esteem of the surrounding families, and, amongst the rest farmer Arnold’s. Rosetta admired all the sister’s, but particularly attached herself to Jane. Their sentiments were congenial, and their chief