greater love, if he were attacked by others? But my father, my dear
father, and my kind, prudent uncle,--something is due to them; and they
would break their hearts if I loved one whom they deemed unworthy. Why
should I not summon courage, and tell him of the suspicions respecting
him? One candid word would dispel them. Surely it would be but kind in
me towards him, to give him an opportunity of disproving all false and
dishonouring conjectures. And why this reserve, when so often, by look
and hint, if not by open avowal, he has declared that he loves me, and
knows--he must know--that he is not indifferent to me? Why does he never
speak of his parents, his relations, his home?"

And Lucy, as she asked this question, drew from a bosom whose hue and
shape might have rivalled hers who won Cymon to be wise,--[See Dryden's
poem of "Cymon and Iphigenia."]--a drawing which she herself had secretly
made of her lover, and which, though inartificially and even rudely done,
yet had caught the inspiration of memory, and breathed the very features
and air that were stamped already ineffaceably upon a heart too holy for
so sullied an idol. She gazed upon the portrait as if it could answer
her question of the original; and as she looked and looked, her tears
slowly ceased, and her innocent countenance relapsed gradually into its
usual and eloquent serenity. Never, perhaps, could Lucy's own portrait
have been taken at a more favourable moment, The unconscious grace of her
attitude; her dress loosened; the modest and youthful voluptuousness of
her beauty; the tender cheek to which the virgin bloom, vanished for a
while, was now all glowingly returning; the little white soft hand on
which that cheek leaned, while the other contained the picture upon which
her eyes fed; the half smile just conjured to her full, red, dewy lips,
and gone the moment after, yet again restored,--all made a picture of
such enchanting loveliness that we question whether Shakspeare himself
could have fancied an earthly shape more meet to embody the vision of a