in humour, they were steady when thoughtfulness was awakened; and at such seasons the build of her winter-beechwood hair lost the touch of nymphlike and whimsical, and strangely, by mere outline, added to her appearance of studious concentration.  Observe the hawk on stretched wings over the prey he spies, for an idea of this change in the look of a young lady whom Vernon Whitford could liken to the Mountain Echo, and Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson pronounced to be “a dainty rogue in porcelain”.

Vernon’s fancy of her must have sprung from her prompt and most musical responsiveness.  He preferred the society of her learned father to that of a girl under twenty engaged to his cousin, but the charm of her ready tongue and her voice was to his intelligent understanding wit, natural wit, crystal wit, as opposed to the paste-sparkle of the wit of the town.  In his encomiums he did not quote Miss Middleton’s wit; nevertheless, he ventured to speak of it to Mrs. Mountstuart, causing that lady to say:  “Ah, well, I have not noticed the wit.  You may have the art of drawing it out.”

No one had noticed the wit.  The corrupted hearing of people required a collision of sounds, Vernon supposed.  For his part, to prove their excellence, he recollected a great many of Miss Middleton’s remarks; they came flying to him; and so long as he forbore to speak them aloud, they had a curious wealth of meaning.  It could not be all her manner, however much his own manner might spoil them.  It might be, to a certain degree, her quickness at catching the hue and shade of evanescent conversation.  Possibly by remembering the whole of a conversation wherein she had her place, the wit was to be tested; only how could any one retain the heavy portion?  As there was no use in being argumentative on a subject affording him personally, and apparently solitarily, refreshment and enjoyment, Vernon resolved to keep it to himself.  The eulogies of her beauty, a possession in which he did not consider her so very conspicuous, irritated him in consequence.  To flatter Sir Willoughby, it was the fashion to exalt her as one of the types of beauty; the one providentially selected to set off his masculine type.  She was compared to those delicate flowers, the ladies of the Court of China, on rice-paper.  A little French dressing would make her at home on the sward by the fountain among the lutes and whispers of the bewitching silken shepherdesses who live though they never were.  Lady Busshe was reminded of the favourite lineaments of the women of Leonardo, the angels of Luini.  Lady Culmer had seen crayon sketches of demoiselles of the French aristocracy resembling her.  Some one mentioned an antique statue of a figure breathing into a flute:  and the mouth at the flutestop might have a distant semblance of the bend of her mouth, but this comparison was repelled as grotesque.

For once Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson was unsuccessful.