sister. The sunlight of a happy and innocent heart sparkled on her face,
and gave a beam it gladdened you to behold, to her quick hazel eye, and a
smile that broke out from a thousand dimples. She did not possess the
height of Madeline, and though not so slender as to be curtailed of the
roundness and feminine luxuriance of beauty, her shape was slighter,
feebler, and less rich in its symmetry than her sister's. And this the
tendency of the physical frame to require elsewhere support, nor to feel
secure of strength, influenced perhaps her mind, and made love, and the
dependence of love, more necessary to her than to the thoughtful and
lofty Madeline. The latter might pass through life, and never see the one
to whom her heart could give itself away. But every village might possess
a hero whom the imagination of Ellinor could clothe with unreal graces,
and to whom the lovingness of her disposition might bias her affections.
Both, however, eminently possessed that earnestness and purity of heart,
which would have made them, perhaps in an equal degree, constant and
devoted to the object of an attachment, once formed, in defiance of
change and to the brink of death.

Their cousin Walter, Geoffrey Lester's son, was now in his twenty-first
year; tall and strong of person, and with a face, if not regularly
handsome, striking enough to be generally deemed so. High-spirited, bold,
fiery, impatient; jealous of the affections of those he loved; cheerful
to outward seeming, but restless, fond of change, and subject to the
melancholy and pining mood common to young and ardent minds: such was the
character of Walter Lester. The estates of Lester were settled in the
male line, and devolved therefore upon him. Yet there were moments when
he keenly felt his orphan and deserted situation; and sighed to think,
that while his father perhaps yet lived, he was a dependent for
affection, if not for maintenance, on the kindness of others. This
reflection sometimes gave an air of sullenness or petulance to his