Читать книгу Mrs. Geoffrey - Duchess - Страница 8

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It is ten days later. The air is growing brisker, the flowers bear no new buds. More leaves are falling on the woodland paths, and the trees are throwing out their last bright autumn tints of red and brown and richest orange, that tell all too plainly of the death that lies before them.

Great cascades of water are rushing from the high hills, tumbling, hurrying, with their own melodious music, into the rocky basins that kind nature has built to receive them. The soothing voices of the air are growing louder, more full of strength; the branches of the elms bow down before them; the gentle wind, "a sweet and passionate wooer," kisses the blushing leaf with perhaps a fiercer warmth than it did a month agone.

It is in the spring—so we have been told—that "a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love;" yet it is in the autumn that our young man takes to this pleasing if somewhat unsatisfactory amusement.

Not that he himself is at all aware of the evil case into which he has fallen. He feels not the arrow in his heart, or the tender bands that slowly but surely are winding themselves around him,—steel bands, decked out and hidden by perfumed flowers. As yet he feels no pang; and, indeed, were any one to even hint at such a thing, he would have laughed aloud at the idea of his being what is commonly termed "in love."

That he—who has known so many seasons, and passed through the practised hands of some of the prettiest women this world can afford, heart-whole, and without a scratch—should fall a victim to the innocent wiles of a little merry Irish girl of no family whatever, seems too improbable even of belief, however lovely beyond description this girl may be (and is), with her wistful, laughing, mischievous Irish eyes, and her mobile lips, and her disposition half angelic, half full of fire and natural coquetry.

Beauty, according to Ovid, is "a favor bestowed by the gods;" Theophrastus says it is "a silent cheat;" and Shakspeare tells us it

"Is but a vain and doubtful good,

A shining gloss that fadeth suddenly,

A flower that dieth when first it 'gins to bud,

A brittle glass that's broken presently,

A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,

Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour."

Mere beauty of form and feature will fade indeed, but Mona's beauty lies not altogether in nose or eyes or mouth, but rather in her soul, which compels her face to express its lightest meaning. It is in her expression, which varies with each passing thought, changing from "grave to gay, from lively to severe," as the soul within speaks to it, that her chief charm dwells. She is never quite the same for two minutes running,—which is the surest safeguard against satiety. And as her soul is pure and clean, and her face is truly the index to her mind, all it betrays but endears her to and makes richer him who reads it.