its semblance. She saw through and pitied those who, pluming themselves
on the faults of others, and imparting to the outward man the ascetic
inflexibility of the inner one, would fain propagate on all sides their
rigid creed, forbidding the more favoured commoners of nature even to
sip joy's chalice. If not a saint, however, but a fair, confiding, and
romantic girl, she was good without misanthropy, pure without
pretension, and joyous, as youth and hopes not crushed might make her.
She was one of those of whom society might justly be proud. She obeyed
its dictates without question, but her feelings underwent no debasement
from the contact. If not a child of nature, she was by no means the
slave of art.

Emily Delme was more beautiful than striking. She impressed more than
she exacted. Her violet eye gleamed with feeling; her smile few could
gaze on without sympathy--happy he who might revel in its brightness!
If aught gave a peculiar tinge to her character, it was the pride she
felt in the name she bore,--this she might have caught from Sir
Henry,--the interest she took in the legends connected with that name,
and the gratification which the thought gave her, that by her ancestors,
its character had been but rarely sullied, and never disgraced.

These things, it may be, she had accustomed herself to look on in a
light too glowing: for these things and all mundane ones are vain; but
her character did not consequently suffer. Her lip curled not with
hauteur, nor was her brow raised one shadow the more. The remembrance of
the old Baronetcy were on the ensanguined plain,--of the matchless
loyalty of a father and five valiant sons in the cause of the Royal
Charles,--the pondering over tomes, which in language obsolete, but
true, spoke of the grandeur--the deserved grandeur of her house; these
might be recollections and pursuits, followed with an ardour too