CHAPTER XI.
How hang those trappings on thy motley gown?
They seem like garlands on the May-day queen!
De Montford.
Soon after the family at Deane Hall had lost the society of Augustus Mordaunt, they had accepted an invitation to dine at Webberly Mouse. The appointed day having arrived, and Cecilia Webberly, being fully attired for the reception of the expected guests, placed herself in a negligent attitude near one of the windows of her mother's drawing-room, with a book in her hand, not for the purpose of reading, but for that of tossing it into a chair, conveniently set for the occasion, as she had seen Lady Eltondale throw her bonnet the evening of her unexpected arrival at Deane Hall.
There could not, however, be a greater contrast, than the full-blown Cecilia Webberly presented, to the elegant fragile Viscountess. Full one half of her massive figure stood confessed to sight, without a single particle of drapery. Her immense shoulders projected far above her sleeve; in truth, her arm was bare half way to her elbow, and her back in emulation nearly to her waist, whose circumference might well be termed the Arctic circle, as it was described at that distance from the pole, which exactly marked the boundary of those regions of eternal snow which rose on its upper verge. Her petticoats, descending but little below the calf of her leg, displayed its "ample round" to the utmost advantage.
But, to counterbalance this nudity, that moiety of her terrestrial frame, which was clothed, was loaded with ornaments and puffings of all descriptions, with reduplicated rows of lace and riband, which most injudiciously increased her natural bulk; and the little covering which was above her waist, differing in colour and texture from that below, made the apparent seem still less than the real length of her garments. Nor did Cecilia's countenance and manner more nearly resemble Lady Eltondale than her dress and figure, as what was quiet elegance in the latter, might, without any great breach of Christian charity, be mistaken for stupid insipidity in the former.
Miss Webberly had not yet finished the repetition of her anticipated impromptus; and her mother had left the room to reiterate her directions about the dinner, so that the fair attitudinist had no spectator of her various rehearsals, except the unaffected Adelaide.
"And what was her garb?—
"I cannot well describe the fashion of it.
"She was not deck'd in any gallant trim,
"But seem'd to me clad in the usual weeds
"Of high habitual state.
"Such artless and majestic elegance,
"So exquisitely just, so nobly simple,
"Might make the gorgeous blush."
But Cecilia Webberly was quite unused to blushing, though she might sometimes redden with passion, and was equally unconscious of her striking inferiority to her unstudied companion. At last the entrance of the Seymour family presented another contrast to the brazen Colossus in Selina's sylph-like form, vivacious eye, and glowing cheek:—