“She is beautiful! beautiful! the most perfectly beautiful living thing I ever saw. In all my dreams of beauty, I never saw a vision of loveliness like that! Do but see, Hagar!—the heavenly love and tenderness in her air and manner; one looking at her, fears that she may fade into air like a vision of poetry.” “Shall I take you up and present you?” she asked, in a low voice. He might have observed—_must_ have observed, the painful constraint of her manner, but that his attention was so concentrated. “Shall I take you up and present you?” “No, no, love! not yet—I wish to observe her from this point a little longer.” She bit her lips until the blood started—her eyes seemed drawn inwards in their intense burning. “Well, then, will you excuse me, Raymond? I wish to leave the room.” “No, love! no! I cannot spare you—you have been away from me too long this morning already,” and he closed his hand firmly upon hers, while he still poured his gaze upon the sofa group. At last she spoke again—“Raymond,” and pressed his hand to call his attention,—“_Raymond!_” “Well, love!” She spoke so low that he had to stoop to catch her words. “Do you not think that if before our union you had seen Ro—” “Well?” “Nothing—nothing—I had better not—see! they are looking over here—come! now let me introduce you.” He now first observed her pallor. “It seems to me you do not look well to-day, Hagar.” She smiled bitterly. “Perhaps not—_to you!_” she added, mentally. “Are you not well?” “Yes.” “Why do you look so haggard, then?” “_To you?_ The force of contrast!—and your eyes are dazzled.” “I must know what you mean, Hagar, but here we are,” he whispered, as they paused before the sofa. Hagar presented him, and Rosalia arose, in her simple, affectionate way, and offered her rosy cheek to the kiss of Raymond, as her relative. Captain Wilde, starting from his seat, exclaimed, “Come, Withers, I will do the magnanimous, although it costs some self-denial, I assure you, yet you shall have my place—come, Mrs. Withers, senior!” And going round to Sophie he drew her arm through his own, and walked her away to the piazza, leaving her place to Hagar, who immediately assumed it. “Now!” said Sophie, her brown eyes dilated, blazing with light and joy, “what do you think of my Rose—is she not beautiful?—is she not sweet, blooming, fragrant?” “Beautiful!—stop, Sophie! don’t set me off!—you know I am ‘gusty’ (_stormy_), when I get an imposing subject! Beautiful!—why she _radiates_ beauty—no one can sit by her or talk with her without catching beauty! growing beautiful! Did you observe that poor old Gardiner Green, how, as he talked with her, all the latent goodness and gladness that were smouldering in the bottom of his heart, was kindled up and broke through his face, lighting up his winter-apple cheeks and black eye-brows until they glowed with beauty, as an autumn landscape glows in the sunbeams!” “Oh, you admire her; you love her; you are a poet!”