Juana was exceedingly tastefully dressed; everything about her was handsome without being showy, as everything about her room was elegant and expensive, without being extravagant. She wore a remarkably well-made black silk dress--the favourite Spanish colour--which showed off the figure it professed to hide; a black mantilla fell from the comb which confined her hair, now dressed in the Spanish way, and gracefully drooped over her white shoulders; she wore a chain of pearls round her neck, from the end of which was suspended a diamond crucifix; and several costly rings gemmed her hand, while bracelets in the shape of serpents with emerald eyes clasped her well-shaped arms. The young girl's striking beauty was still the same, and the hot evening, and exertion of fanning herself with the fan, which, as Shakespeare says, "seemed to glow the delicate cheek which it did cool," gave a radiant bloom to her Spanish complexion, enhancing her extreme loveliness. Her eye was darkly lustrous still, but there was an air of discontented pride in her countenance, and a weary dejectedness, that clouded her bright eyes, which had no business there. All that money could give was on, and around her. But what gold could not purchase was lacking--a heart to enjoy them, and a heart to share her delights. Little they know of woman's nature, who fancy that _every_ young creature who has not the moral courage to resist temptation and falls, loses her heart with her name! Low, indeed, must she be fallen who has no heart! Name--fame--all may go--the heart never. And though a life of shame may make it grow callous, and apparently dead; though a life of deceit may freeze its feelings; beneath its icy exterior some traces of former sensibility are buried. They may be but the feeble tricklings of the stream, which all the glacier's cold cannot freeze, but are still quick--still living amid a mass of external frigidity. Juana, as we have already said, had strong feelings towards the Earl: what woman would not under her circumstances? Mingled with these sentiments were shadows of distrust; and when she compared their love to that which had once bound her heart in earlier, happier days, she felt how feeble and how dim was its greatest light. Juana had once had another lover--of him we may hereafter hear more--suffice to say death had severed their tie, and now:-- "The love where death _had_ set his seal, Nor age _could_ chill, nor rival steal, Nor falsehood disavow."