A very good-looking face it was too, with its wide, intellectual brow, round which the brown silky hair waved in such becoming clusters--its perfect oval and delicate high-bred features, if they had a fault, too girlish in their soft, winning expression--in fact, he was as like Blanche as possible; and had his moustaches been shaved, could he indeed have submitted to the sacrifice, his stature lowered, and a bonnet and shawl put on, he might well have passed for his pretty cousin. There was nothing effeminate though about Charlie, save his countenance and his smile. That slender, graceful figure was lithe and wiry as the panther’s--those symmetrical limbs could toil, those little feet could walk and run, after a Hercules would have been blown and overpowered; and when standing up to his wicket, rousing a horse, or putting him at a fence, there was a game sparkle in his eye that, to use Frank Hardingstone’s expression, “meant mischief.” Some of these good-looking young gentlemen are “ugly customers” enough when their blood is up, and Cousin Charlie, like the rest, had quite as much “devil” in his composition as was good for him. The “pretty page” only wanted a few years over his head, a little more beard upon his lip, to be a perfect Paladin. But the spell went on working the whole of dinner-time; in vain the General told his most wondrous anecdotes, scolded his servants at intervals, and pressed his good cheer on the little party--Charlie _could_ not get over his astonishment. Mrs. Delaval sat by him, looking like a queen, and talked in her own peculiarly winning voice and impressive manner, just enough to make him wish for more. She was one of those women who, speaking but little, seem always to mean more than they say, and on whom conscious mental superiority, and the calm subdued air worn by those who have known affliction, confer a certain mysterious charm, which makes fearful havoc in a young gentleman’s heart. There is nothing enslaves a boy so completely as a spice of romance. An elderly Strephon will go on his knees to a romping schoolgirl, and the more hoydenish and unsophisticated the object, the more will the old reprobate adore her; but beardless youth loves to own superiority where it worships, loves to invest its idol with the fabulous attributes that compose its own ideal; and of all the _liaisons_, honourable and otherwise, that have bound their votaries in silken fetters, those have been the most fatal, and the most invincible, which have dated their existence from an earnest boyish heart’s first devotion to a woman some years his senior, of whom the good-natured world says, “To be sure she _is_ handsome, but Lor’! she’s old enough to be his mother!”