There was a strong contrast in the two boys. The elder, who was about
fifteen, seemed older than he was, not only from his height, but from the
darkness of his complexion, and a certain proud, nay, imperious,
expression upon features that, without having the soft and fluent graces
of childhood, were yet regular and striking. His dark-green shooting-
dress, with the belt and pouch, the cap, with its gold tassel set upon
his luxuriant curls, which had the purple gloss of the raven's plume,
blended perhaps something prematurely manly in his own tastes, with the
love of the fantastic and the picturesque which bespeaks the presiding
genius of the proud mother. The younger son had scarcely told his ninth
year; and the soft, auburn ringlets, descending half-way down the
shoulders; the rich and delicate bloom that exhibits at once the hardy
health and the gentle fostering; the large deep-blue eyes; the flexile
and almost effeminate contour of the harmonious features; altogether made
such an ideal of childlike beauty as Lawrence had loved to paint or
Chantrey model. And the daintiest cares of a mother, who, as yet, has
her darling all to herself--her toy, her plaything--were visible in the
large falling collar of finest cambric, and the blue velvet dress with
its filigree buttons and embroidered sash.

Both the boys had about them the air of those whom Fate ushers blandly
into life; the air of wealth, and birth, and luxury, spoiled and pampered
as if earth had no thorn for their feet, and heaven not a wind to visit
their young cheeks too roughly. The mother had been extremely handsome;
and though the first bloom of youth was now gone, she had still the
beauty that might captivate new love--an easier task than to retain the
old. Both her sons, though differing from each other, resembled her; she
had the features of the younger; and probably any one who had seen her in
her own earlier youth would have recognized in that child's gay yet