Not one of these was she, the lady of our tale. There was a quiet dignity lurking even under her easiest words and actions which made you feel her notice a compliment: there was a fascination in her calm smile and in her sunlit eye which made her invitation to amusement itself a pleasure. If you refused, you were not pressed, but left to that isolation which you appeared to admire; if you assented, you were rewarded with a word which made you feel how sweet was such society! Her invention never flagged, her gaiety never ceased; yet both were spontaneous, and often were unobserved. All felt amused, and all were unconsciously her agents. Her word and her example seemed, each instant, to call forth from her companions new accomplishments, new graces, new sources of joy and of delight. All were surprised that they were so agreeable.
MORNING came, and the great majority of the gentlemen rose early as Aurora. The chase is the favourite pastime of man and boy; yet some preferred plundering their host’s preserves, by which means their slumbers were not so brief and their breakfast less disturbed. The _battue_, however, in time, called forth its band, and then one by one, or two by two, or sometimes even three, leaning on each other’s arms and smiling in each other’s faces, the ladies dropped into the breakfast-room at Castle Dacre. There, until two o’clock, a lounging meal might always be obtained, but generally by twelve the coast was clear; for our party were a natural race of beings, and would have blushed if flaming noon had caught them napping in their easy couches. Our bright bird, May Dacre, too, rose from her bower, full of the memory of the sweetest dreams, and fresh as lilies ere they kiss the sun.
She bends before her ivory crucifix, and gazes on her blessed mother’s face, where the sweet Florentine had tinged with light a countenance
Too fair for worship, too divine for love!
And innocence has prayed for fresh support, and young devotion told her holy beads. She rises with an eye of mellowed light, and her soft cheek is tinted with the flush that comes from prayer. Guard over her, ye angels! wheresoe’er and whatsoe’er ye are! For she shall be your meet companion in an after-day. Then love your gentle friend, this sinless child of clay!