His eyes soon found the lovely face of Lady Florimel,
but after the first glance he dared hardly look again. Whether its
radiance had any smallest source in the pleasure of appearing like
a goddess in the eyes of her humble servant, I dare not say, but
more lucent she could hardly have appeared had she been the princess
in a fairy tale, about to marry her much thwarted prince. She wore
far too many jewels for one so young, for her father had given her
all that belonged to her mother, as well as some family diamonds,
and her inexperience knew no reason why she should not wear them.
The diamonds flashed and sparkled and glowed on a white rather
than fair neck, which, being very much uncollared dazzled Malcolm
far more than the jewels. Such a form of enhanced loveliness,
reflected for the first time in the pure mirror of a high toned
manhood, may well be to such a youth as that of an angel with whom
he has henceforth to wrestle in deadly agony until the final dawn;
for lofty condition and gorgeous circumstance, while combining to
raise a woman to an ideal height, ill suffice to lift her beyond
love, or shield the lowliest man from the arrows of her radiation;
they leave her human still. She was talking and laughing with a
young man of weak military aspect, whose eyes gazed unshrinking on
her beauty.
The guests were not numerous: a certain bold faced countess, the
fire in whose eyes had begun to tarnish, and the natural lines of
whose figure were vanishing in expansion; the soldier, her nephew,
a waisted elegance; a long, lean man, who dawdled with what he ate,
and drank as if his bones thirsted; an elderly, broad; red faced,
bull necked baron of the Hanoverian type; and two neighbouring
lairds and their wives, ordinary, and well pleased to be at the
marquis's table.
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