“Hangcoor!” repeated a young sailor, considerably more than half-seas over, as he unconsciously re-charged his pipe, as though he were ramming down the wadding of a gun, “hangcoor!--Go it agen, Bess, or whatever your name is. Hangcoor!” This word, under a dozen different pronunciations, ran round the room, while Miss Harriet Wintlebury made a profound courtesy, and proceeded to repeat her song. As Colin gazed, and gazed again, turned away his eyes, and as instantly fixed them upon the same beautiful object again, his bosom burned, and his cheeks grew flushed,--he felt as though in the presence of a being whom he could think scarcely inferior to the angels--at least, he had never in his life seen _woman_ as she is before. For what were the simple beings under that name whom he had met in the out-of-the-way country nook he had so recently left? What was his late mistress, Miss Sowersoft?--what the maids on the farm?--what even Fanny herself?--mere plain, dull, plodding, lifeless creatures of the feminine gender, and nothing more. But this enchantress!--his heart leaped up, and in that one moment he felt more of the deep yearning of love than ever in the course of his whole life he had felt before. “Let us go nearer,” he whispered to his companion; and in the next minute they were forcing their way down one of the passages between the forms towards the other end of the room. Before they had succeeded in obtaining a seat on the last form, close under the stage-lamps, Miss Harriet had concluded her melody, and retired amidst considerable applause. Until the period of her reappearance the time occupied by other performers seemed to Colin endless. Under other circumstances, the novelty and freshness of such an entertainment would have beguiled his attention deeply, and resolved hours into the seeming space of but a few minutes; but now the sense of pleasure derived from this source was rendered dull and pointless by comparison with that far keener delight, that tumultuous throng of hopeful passions, which had so suddenly and strangely taken possession of his bosom. At length she came again,--he started, astonished. Could it be the same? The clear bright complexion--(or what had seemed at the further end of the room to be so)--now looked opaque and earthy; the white was dead white, and the red as abruptly red as though St. Anthony had been busy with his pencil, patching those cheeks with fire; while the substratum of bone and flesh looked worn into a shape of anxious pain, that gave the lie direct and palpable to the colourable pretensions of the surface. And then the handsome bust, which at a distance seemed so beautiful, now appeared a most miserable artistical mockery of nature; and the fixed meaningless gaze,--the mouth formally extended in order to display the teeth,--the dead lack-lustre stare at the remote end of the room, calculated to produce an impression on the more distant portion of the audience,--all