The day arrived, and Laura prepared to accompany her father, not without trepidation at the thought of entering, for the first time in her life, a room which she expected to find full of strangers. When she had finished dressing, he examined her with triumph; and thought that nothing in nature was so perfect. The thought was legible in his countenance, and Laura, with great simplicity, answered to it as if it had been spoken. 'Except to please you,' said she, 'I wish I had been neither tall nor pretty, for then I should have been allowed to move about without notice.' 'Then, too,' thought she with a heavy sigh, 'I should have been loved for my self, and not have been perhaps forgotten.' Laura was not ignorant of her own beauty, but no human being could less value the distinction. She was aware of the regularity of her features; but as she never used a looking-glass, unless for the obvious purpose of arranging her dress, she was insensible of the celestial charm which expression added to her face. The seriousness and dignity of her manners made it difficult to address her with common-place compliment; and she had accordingly never experienced any effect of her beauty, but one which was altogether disagreeable to her, that of attracting notice. To being the subject of observation, Laura retained that Caledonian dislike which once distinguished her country-women, before they were polished into that glitter which attracts the vulgar, and paid for the acquisition by the loss of the timidity which, like the ærugo of ancient coin, adds value in the eye of taste to intrinsic worth, while it shields even baser merit from contempt.