Gillian Greenford was a bright-eyed, fair-haired young creature; light, laughing, radiant; with cheeks soft as peach bloom, and beautifully tinged with red, lips carnation-hued, and teeth white as pearls.  Her parti-coloured, linsey-woolsey petticoats looped up on one side disclosed limbs with no sort of rustic clumsiness about them; but, on the contrary, a particularly neat formation both of foot and ankle.  Her scarlet bodice, which, like the lower part of her dress, was decorated with spangles, bugles, and tinsel ornaments of various kinds,—­very resplendent in the eyes of the surrounding swains, as well as in those of Dick Taverner,—­her bodice, we say, spanning a slender waist, was laced across, while the snowy kerchief beneath it did not totally conceal a very comely bust.  A wreath of natural flowers was twined very gracefully within her waving and almost lint-white locks, and in her hand she held a shepherdess’s crook.  Such was the Beauty of Tottenham, and the present Queen of the May.  Dick Taverner thought her little less than angelic, and there were many besides who shared in his opinion.

If Dick had been thus captivated on the sudden, Jocelyn had not escaped similar fascination from another quarter.  It befel in this way: 

At an open oriel window, in one of the ancient and picturesque habitations before described as facing the green, stood a young maiden, whose beauty was of so high an order, and so peculiar a character, that it at once attracted and fixed attention.  Such, at least, was the effect produced by it on Jocelyn.  Shrinking from the public gaze, and, perhaps, from some motive connected with religious scruples, scarcely deeming it right to be a spectator of the passing scene, this fair maiden was so placed as to be almost screened from general view.  Yet it chanced that Jocelyn, from the circumstance of being on horseback, and from his position, was able to command a portion of the room in which she stood; and he watched her for some minutes before she became aware she was the object of his regards.  When, at length, she perceived that his gaze was steadily fixed upon her, a deep blush suffused her cheeks, and she would have instantly retired, if the young man had not at once lowered his looks.  Still, he ever and anon ventured a glance towards the oriel window, and was delighted to find the maiden still there,—­nay, he fancied she must have advanced a step or two, for he could unquestionably distinguish her features more plainly.  And lovely they were—­most lovely! pensive in expression, and perhaps a thought too pale, until the crimsoning tide had mounted to her cheek.  Thus mantled with blushes, her countenance might gain something in beauty, but it lost much of the peculiar charm which it derived from extreme transparency and whiteness of skin—­a tint which set off to perfection the splendour of her magnificent black eyes, with their darkly-fringed lids and brows, while it also relieved, in an equal degree, the jetty lustre