'Is it possible?' said Emma, her cheeks glowing and her eyes sparkling as she spoke: 'you may not mean to flatter me, but I assure you I am flattered; for I never saw any woman whom in appearance I so much wished to resemble.'
'You do resemble her indeed,' cried Colonel Mordaunt, 'and the likeness grows stronger and stronger.'
Emma blushed deeper and deeper.
'But come,' exclaimed he, 'let us go; and I will—no, you shall—relate to the party in the next room what I have been telling you, for I long to shame those d—'
'Fye!' said Emma smiling, and holding up her hand as if to stop the coming word. And she did stop it; for Colonel Mordaunt conveyed the reproving hand to his lips; and Emma said to herself, as she half frowning withdrew it, 'I am glad my brother was not present.'
Their return to the breakfast-room was welcome to every one, from different causes, as Colonel Mordaunt's motives for requesting a tête-à-tête had given rise to various conjectures. But all conjecture was soon lost in certainty: for Emma Douglas, with more than usual animation of voice and countenance, related what Colonel Mordaunt had authorized her to relate; and the envious sisters heard, with increased resentment, that Adeline, were she unmarried, would be the choice of the man whose affections they were eagerly endeavouring to captivate.
'You can't think,' said Colonel Mordaunt, when Emma had concluded, leaving him charmed with the manner in which she had told his story, and with the generous triumph which sparkled in her eyes at being able to exhibit Adeline's character in so favourable a point of view, 'you can't think how much Miss Douglas reminds me of Mrs Berrendale!'
'Lord!' said Miss Maynard with a toss of the head, 'my brother told us that she was handsome!'
'And so she is,' replied the colonel, provoked at this brutal speech: 'she has one of the finest countenances that I ever saw,—a countenance never distorted by those feelings of envy, and expressions of spite, which so often disfigure some women,—converting even a beauty into a fiend; and in this respect no one will doubt that Miss Douglas resembles her:
| 'What's female beauty—but an air divine, |
| Thro' which the mind's all gentle graces shine?' |