While the party were agreeably engaged in conversation they were suddenly interrupted by a loud knock at the door.
“Who can that be?” said the governor. “Will you ask who knocks, Mr. Elmore?”
The latter rose and unlatched the door, when two figures crossed the threshold.
“Pray pardon us,” said one of the new comers, in a courteous voice, “but having business of importance with the governor, we have ventured to intrude,” and he lifted his hat with something of foreign urbanity.
The speaker was not handsome, but there was a certain elegance in his air, and intelligence in his countenance that were agreeable. He was clad in a velvet traveling-dress, and possessed an address greatly superior to any of the villagers, at the same time that his height and the breadth of his muscular limbs were calculated to induce that admiration which the appearance of great strength in his sex always inspires.
His companion was totally different in all outward respects—being a man of about fifty years of age, attired in a garb which was chiefly distinguished by an affectation of ill-assorted finery. A colored silk handkerchief, in which glittered a large paste brooch, was twisted around his neck, and his breeches were ornamented with plated buckles. His harsh countenance was traced with furrows, while his hair fell over a low and forbidding brow, on which hung a heavy frown, unrelieved by any pleasing expression of the other features.
“Walk in, gentlemen, and approach the fire,” said Governor H., rising and eyeing the strangers with a keen and rather dissatisfied glance.
In drawing near the younger gallant cast an unsuppressed look of admiration upon Lucy Ellet, that caused her to bend down her sparkling eyes, which had previously been fixed on himself and his companion with an arch expression of penetrating curiosity.
It was not surprising that the attention of the stranger had been attracted by the appearance of this young lady, for, like the little Jessy, she was endowed with a more than ordinary share of personal attractions. Yet it must be admitted that the styles of their beauty were of an exactly opposite cast. One of those singular freaks of Nature which sometimes creates children of the same parents in the most dissimilar mould, seemed to have operated in their case to produce two sisters as unlike in every particular relating to outward appearance as possible.
While the young countenance of Jessy was of the tenderest and softest Madonna cast, her eyes of a delicate azure, and the light golden locks parted upon a fair brow, like a gleam of sunshine upon a hill of snow, her sister’s face was precisely the opposite. Lucy’s complexion, indeed, was of the darkest hue ever seen in maidens of English birth, yet mantled withal by so rich a shade of color, that for many it might have possessed a greater charm than the fairness of a blonde. Her hair was black as night; and her eyes, of the same hue, were never excelled in lustre or beauty by the loveliest damsels of Spain. Her countenance was of a lively and expressive character, in which spirit and wit seemed to predominate; and the quick, black eye, with its beautifully penciled brow, seemed to presage the arch remark to which the rosy and half smiling lip appeared ready to give utterance.