WHY MRS. RADNOR FAINTED.
[Why Mrs. Radnor Fainted.]
YOU have seen hazel eyes,—have you not? I don't mean the quiet nut-brown ones, you meet every day, but bona fide hazel eyes, opaline in their wonderful changes,—that make you wonder, when you turn away from them, what color they will have assumed when you next look into their depths; for such eyes have depths, sometimes glowing emerald-like, with a steady, lambent flame, now gleaming with a soft lustre like pearls, or melted into sapphires by tears.
Such eyes had Mrs. Radnor,—cold, beautiful woman that she was; insensible, I was about to say, only I remember her fainting at sight of a pond-lily. How well I recollect the day! There was a party of us passing the midsummer at the old Richmond farm, a few miles from ——; Mr. and Mrs. Ferdinand Radnor among the rest. The latter, a haughty statuesque woman, with nothing save her wonderful eyes to indicate anything approaching a heart,—lovely as a dream, yet with beauty that repelled even in its fascination. Such hair, too, as she had, rolling in golden ripples down to her slender feet;—fine as silk, it was brown in the shade, but glowed and intensified in the light till it seemed as if a thousand stray sunbeams were imprisoned in the radiant mass. We always called her the "Princess with the golden locks." You remember her in the fairy tale,—do you not? That one, I mean, whose hair was the wonder and admiration of the whole world, and whose lovers delighted to bind themselves with fetters so exquisite; yet when they strove playfully to throw them off, they found themselves with gyves and manacles of steel, under which they were powerless.
Mr. Radnor was urbane and gentlemanly; but, possessing only half a soul, he divided the interest of that equally between admiring his own person and annoying Mrs. Radnor by his attentions.