“Let me gratify my merry malice, ladye fair; time has shown some little consideration for you in this matter, for, while he has left no deeper impress on your husband’s brow, he has expanded the slender girl into the blooming, matronly-looking woman. You are now well matched, Emily, and your husband is one of the handsomest men of—his age.”
The arch look of the speaker interpreted the equivocally-worded compliment, and, with a joyous laugh, Mrs. Heyward resumed:
“It was about the time of your marriage, and shortly before your departure for Europe, that I became acquainted with Frank Harcourt. You must remember his exceeding beauty. The first time I beheld him, Byron’s exquisite description of the Apollo Belvedere rose to my lips:
——“In his delicate form,—a dream of Love
Shaped by some solitary nymph, whose heart
Longed for a deathless lover from above
And maddened in that vision, is exprest
All that ideal beauty ever blessed
The mind with in its most unearthly mood.”
His admirable symmetry of form, and a face of such perfect contour, such exquisite regularity of feature, that its semblance in marble might have been valued as a relic of Grecian ideal beauty, were alone sufficient to attract the admiration of such a lover of the beautiful as I always have been; but the charm of perfect coloring, the effect of light and shade was not wanting in this finished picture. His full dark eye sparkled beneath a snow-white forehead,—his cheek was bronzed by exposure and yet bright with health,—his lips were crimson and velvet-like as the pomegranate flower,—his teeth white as the ocean pearl,—his raven curls fell in those rich slight tendrils so rarely seen except on the head of infancy,—while the soft and delicate shadowing in his lip and chin resembled rather the silken texture of a lady’s eyebrow, than the wiry and matted masses of hair usually cherished under the name of whiskers and moustache.”