Anxious, she hovers o'er the web the while,
Reads, as it grows, thy figured story there;
Now she explains the texture with a smile,
And now the woof interprets with a tear.

Fawcett.

All Maud's feelings were healthful and natural. She had no exaggerated
sentiments, and scarcely art enough to control or to conceal any of the
ordinary impulses of her heart. We are not about to relate a scene,
therefore, in which a long-cherished but hidden miniature of the young
man is to play a conspicuous part, and to be the means of revealing to
two lovers the state of their respective hearts; but one of a very
different character. It is true, Maud had endeavoured to make, from
memory, one or two sketches of "Bob's" face; but she had done it
openly, and under the cognizance of the whole family. This she might
very well do, indeed, in her usual character of a sister, and excite no
comments. In these efforts, her father and mother, and Beulah, had
uniformly pronounced her success to be far beyond their hopes; but
Maud, herself, had thrown them all aside, half-finished, dissatisfied
with her own labours. Like the author, whose fertile imagination
fancies pictures that defy his powers of description, her pencil ever
fell far short of the face that her memory kept so constantly in view.
This sketch wanted animation, that gentleness, another fire, and a
fourth candour; in short, had Maud begun a thousand all would have been
deficient, in her eyes, in some great essential of perfection. Still,
she had no secret about her efforts, and half-a-dozen of these very
sketches lay uppermost in her portfolio, when she spread it, and its
contents, before the eyes of the original.