An elderly foreign gentleman, of large information and agreeable manners, but not one of fortune's favorites, had been dining with us, by special invitation, and the lovely daughters of my host had vied with each other in doing honor to one in whom sensitiveness may have been rendered a little morbid by the effect of the tyrant Circumstance. Every hour succeeding his arrival had served more effectually to melt away a certain constraint of manner, by which he seemed at first oppressed, and his expressive face grew bland and genial under the sunny influences of courteous respect and appreciation, until when he rose to go away at sunset, he seemed almost metamorphosed out of the man of the morning.
The sisters three, accompanied their agreeable visitor to the vine-draped veranda, where I was already seated, attracted by the beauty of the evening, and of my local surroundings. I had been particularly admiring a fine large orange-tree, at the entrance of the porch, which was laden with flowers and fruit, and, with glittering pearls from a shower just bestowed upon it by the gardener.
"Will you not come again, before Colonel Lunettes
leaves us, Mr. ——?" asked my sweet young friend Fanny, in her most cordial tones, linking her arm in that of one sister, and clasping the waist of the other, as she spoke, "we will invoke the Loves and Graces to attend you"——
"The Graces!" exclaimed the guest, quickly,—extending his hands towards the group, and bowing profoundly—"then you will come yourselves!—the Graces are before me!" And then he added, with a courtly air—"Really, Miss Fanny, you too highly honor a rusty old man"——
"An old man," interrupted Fanny, with the utmost vivacity, dissolving the "linked sweetness" that had intwined her with her sisters, and extending her beautiful arm towards the superb orange-tree before her, "an old man!—here is a fitting emblem of our friend Mr. ——;—all the attractiveness of youth still mingled with the matured fruit of experience!"
Charming Fanny! God bless her!—she is one of those earth-angels whose manifold gifts seem used only to give happiness to others!
I called one evening, not long since, to pay my respects to the daughter of a recently-deceased and much-valued friend. She had been persuaded into a journey to a distant city, in search of the health and spirits that had been exceedingly impaired by watching beside the death-bed of her departed mother. Her appearance could scarcely fail, as it seemed to me, to interest the most insensible stranger to her history;—for myself, I was inexpressibly touched by the language of the colorless face and languid eyes to which a simple black robe lent additional meaning.
Just as I began to indulge a hope that the faint smile my endeavors at cheerful conversation had caused to flicker about her lips—as a rose-tint illumines for a moment the white summit of an Alpine height—there entered the drawing-room of our hostess a bevy of noisy women, young and old, who gathered about the sofa, where my friend and I were seated near our hostess, and rattled away like so many pieces of small (very small!) artillery.