Coningsby's mind, as he bowed, a little agitated from his surprise, to
Lady Theresa Sydney. All that he remembered had prepared him for beauty;
but not for the degree or character of beauty that he met. It was a rich,
sweet face, with blue eyes and dark lashes, and a nose that we have no
epithet in English to describe, but which charmed in Roxalana. Her brown
hair fell over her white and well turned shoulders in long and luxuriant
tresses. One has met something as brilliant and dainty in a medallion of
old Sevres, or amid the terraces and gardens of Watteau.

Perhaps Lady Theresa, too, might have welcomed him with more freedom had
his appearance also more accorded with the image which he had left behind.
Coningsby was a boy then, as we described him in our first chapter. Though
only nineteen now, he had attained his full stature, which was above the
middle height, and time had fulfilled that promise of symmetry in his
figure, and grace in his mien, then so largely intimated. Time, too, which
had not yet robbed his countenance of any of its physical beauty, had
strongly developed the intellectual charm by which it had ever been
distinguished. As he bowed lowly before the Duchess and her daughter, it
would have been difficult to imagine a youth of a mien more prepossessing
and a manner more finished.

A manner that was spontaneous; nature's pure gift, the reflex of his
feeling. No artifice prompted that profound and polished homage. Not one
of those influences, the aggregate of whose sway produces, as they tell
us, the finished gentleman, had ever exercised its beneficent power on our
orphan, and not rarely forlorn, Coningsby. No clever and refined woman,
with her quick perception, and nice criticism that never offends our self-
love, had ever given him that education that is more precious than
Universities. The mild suggestions of a sister, the gentle raillery of
some laughing cousin, are also advantages not always appreciated at the