But the articles in Richard Smith’s cottage were of a different character, and of much more recent date than such as those alluded to above. There hung upon the walls some landscapes, which indeed a person in poverty might have drawn, but which no poor man would keep or would embellish with handsome modern frames. There were also several engravings, which had not been published more than sixteen or seventeen years. Instead of the usual cottage clock with clumsily painted figures and elm-case, there stood on a bracket a neat time-piece, with the name of a celebrated Parisian maker. Upon a set of hanging-shelves there lay several volumes of fancifully and apparently foreign bound books. These were for the most part Italian, but a few were French. While Mr. Martindale was talking to the old man, Horatio Markham, according to a very common, but not very decorous practice of young men who affect literature, was amusing himself with taking down and opening one after another of the books; and seeing the character of them, and that in their selection they gave proof of a correct and polished taste, he could not but look more attentively at the old man’s niece, with an endeavour to trace in her countenance an expression of a style above that of a simple rustic. The human countenance is susceptible of great variety of expression, and owes much to surrounding circumstances: the very same set of features which in one garb and place would savour of rusticity, would bear a different interpretation in another garb and with other adjuncts. In like manner, the imagination of the spectator does much in giving an interpretation to features, and ascertaining physiognomical indications. So when Horatio Markham saw the young woman in the witness-box giving, with downcast look and trembling accents, her testimony as to the injury sustained by a poor old man, he could see nothing more, for he thought nothing more was to be seen, than a modest, simple, and tolerably pretty face, having no remarkable or peculiar expression. But when he saw the same person, with the same features and the same expression of retiring modesty, surrounded with the productions of art, and apparently the only person in the cottage to whom those productions could be interesting, and by whom those books should be read and enjoyed, he soon fancied that he observed indications of a superior mind and a cultivated understanding. Nay, so far did his imagination influence him, that the impulse which he first felt to address some inquiries to the old man’s niece concerning the books and drawings was absolutely repelled by a feeling of awe. He now began to paint to his imagination a person of superior rank, and to be astonished that he had not before observed that her whole style and expression was far above her professed situation.