At the period when my sad tale commences—for it is no less sad than true—the sisters had just reached the young yet perfect bloom of mature womanhood, the elder, Annabel, having attained her twentieth summer, her sister Marian being exactly one year younger; and certainly two sweeter or more lovely girls could not be pictured or imagined—not in the brightest moments of the painter’s or the poet’s inspiration. They were both tall and beautifully formed—both had sweet low-toned voices—that excellent thing in woman!—but here all personal resemblance ended; for Annabel, the elder, had a complexion pure and transparent as the snow of the untrodden glacier before the sun has kissed it into roseate blushes, and quite as colorless; her features were of the finest classic outline; the smooth, fair brow, the perfect Grecian nose, the short curve of the upper lip, the exquisite arch of the small mouth, the chiselled lines of the soft rounded chin, might have served for a model to a sculptor, whereby to mould a mountain nymph or Naiad; her rich luxuriant hair was of a light and sunny brown, her eyes of a clear, lustrous blue, with a soft, languid, and half melancholy tenderness for their more usual expression, which united well with the calm, placid air which was almost habitual to her beautiful features. To this no contrast more complete could have been offered than by the widely different style of Marian’s loveliness. Though younger than her sister, her figure was more full and rounded—so much so, that it reached the very point where symmetry is combined with voluptuousness—yet was there nothing in the least degree voluptuous in the expression of her bright artless face. Her forehead, higher than Annabel’s, and broader, was as smooth and as white as polished marble; her brows were well-defined and black as ebony, as were the long, long lashes that fringed her laughing eyes—eyes of the brightest, lightest azure that ever glanced with merriment, or melted into love—her nose was small and delicate, but turned a little upwards, so as to add, however, rather than detract from the _tout ensemble_ of her arch, roguish beauty—her mouth was not very small, but exquisitely formed, with lips redder than anything in nature, to which lips can be well compared, and filled with teeth, regular, white and beautifully even—fair as her sister’s, and, like hers, showing every where the tiny veins of azure meandering below the milky skin, Marian’s complexion was yet as bright as morning—faint rosy tints and red, warm blushes succeeding one another, or vanishing away and leaving the cheek pearly white, as one emotion followed and effaced another in her pure, innocent mind. Her hair, profuse in its luxuriant flow, was of a deep dark brown, that might have been almost called black, but for a thousand glancing golden lights and warm rich shadows that varied its smooth surface with the varying sunshine, and was worn in a thick, massive plait low down in