Juliet could scarcely be termed beautiful; but her person was very attractive.  Her features were small, but belonged to none of the favored orders of female beauty; and her complexion was pallid, rendered more conspicuously so by the raven hair, that fell in long silken ringlets down her slender white throat, and spread like a dark veil round her elegant bust and shoulders.  Her lofty brow was pure as marble, and marked by that high look of moral and intellectual power, before which mere physical beauty shrinks into insignificance.  Soft pencilled eyebrows gave additional depth and lustre to a pair of the most lovely deep blue eyes that ever flashed from beneath a fringe of jet.  There was an expression of tenderness almost amounting to sadness, in those sweet eyes; and when they were timidly raised to meet those of the young Anthony, a light broke upon his heart, which the storms and clouds of after-life could never again extinguish.

“Miss Juliet, your father has been giving us a treat,” said the Colonel.

Poor Juliet turned first very red, and then very pale, and glanced reproachfully at the old man.

“Nay, Miss Whitmore, you need not be ashamed of that which does you so much credit,” said the Colonel, pitying her confusion.

“Dear papa, it was cruel to betray me,” said Juliet, the tears of mortified sensibility filling her fine eyes.  “Colonel Hurdlestone, you will do me a great favor by never alluding to this subject again.”

“You are a great admirer of nature, Miss Whitmore, or you could never write poetry,” said Godfrey, heedless of the distress of the poor girl.  But he was tired of sitting silent, and longed for an opportunity of addressing her.

“Poetry is the language in which nature speaks to the heart of the young,” said Juliet.  “Do you think that there ever was a young person indifferent to the beauties of poetry?”

“All young people have not your taste and fine feeling,” said Godfrey.  “There are some persons who can walk into a garden without distinguishing the flowers from the weeds.  You have of course read Shakspeare?”

“It formed the first epoch in my life,” returned Juliet with animation.  “I never shall forget the happy day when I first revelled through the fairy isle with Ariel and his dainty spirits.  My father was from home, and had left the key in the library door.  It was forbidden ground.  My aunt was engaged with an old friend in the parlor, so I ventured in, and snatched at the first book which came to hand.  It was a volume of Shakspeare, and contained, among other plays, the Tempest and Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Afraid of detection I stole away into the park, and beneath the shadow of the greenwood tree, I devoured with rapture the inspired pages of the great magician.  What a world of wonders it opened to my view!  Since that eventful hour poetry has become to me the language of nature—­the voice in which creation lifts up its myriad anthems to the throne of God.”