What to do to relieve the torment I knew not. To ask for another bed was out of the question, and to attempt to sleep on thorns--thorns! they would have been thought a luxury to this of lying enduring the pains of the doomed. After long endurance of the pain, and in racking my brains considering what was best to be done, the intolerable sensations began by degrees to subside and grow less and less; but the heat, although nearly insupportable, was more easily endured. That horrible night was a long one--and long will it be before it is forgotten.
Coming down in the morning, expecting to find the lady all smiles and graces, I was surprised and hurt to find she received me rather coldly, and with averted head; but when she could no longer avoid turning round, never, in the whole course of my life, was I more astonished at the change she had undergone. It was a total, a radical change--she was hardly to be recognized--and it was scarcely possible to believe she was the lovely woman of the last night. Not that her splendid figure was altered--in fact, an elegant morning-dress rather tended to improve and set-off her full and almost voluptuous contour, and her soft, sweet voice was equally musical; but her face--the charms of her lovely face were vanished and gone!
Every one will admit that the nose is a most important, nay, a very prominent feature in female beauty. It is indispensible that a belle should have a beautiful nose; in fact, it is a question whether a woman without an eye would not be preferable to one with--but I anticipate.
"I see your surprise, sir," said she, with evident chagrin, "but it is all owing to you."
"To _me_, madam! I presume you allude to the altered appearance of your face, but I cannot conceive what I can have had to do with the change."
In brief, her beautiful nose was all over as red as scarlet, particularly the point of it, which exactly resembled a large red cherry, or ripe Siberian crab-apple. Now just think of it--a very fair woman with a blood-red nose! Faugh! it is enough to sicken the most devoted admirer of the sex. Suppose any gentleman going to be married, and full of love and admiration, should, on going to the house of his beloved bride on the appointed morning, to take her to church, humming to himself that sweet song, "She Wove a Wreath of Roses," finds her beautiful nose become a big rosy nosegay--would he not be apt to suppose she had over night been making pretty free sacrifices, not to the little god of love, but to jolly Bacchus? I did not do _my_ belle such an injustice--and yet what could I think?