"Thou sayest true, Janet," said the young and beautiful Countess,
stopping suddenly from her tripping race of enraptured delight, and
looking at herself from head to foot in a large mirror, such as she had
never before seen, and which, indeed, had few to match it even in the
Queen's palace--"thou sayest true, Janet!" she answered, as she saw,
with pardonable self-applause, the noble mirror reflect such charms as
were seldom presented to its fair and polished surface; "I have more of
the milk-maid than the countess, with these cheeks flushed with haste,
and all these brown curls, which you laboured to bring to order,
straying as wild as the tendrils of an unpruned vine. My falling ruff is
chafed too, and shows the neck and bosom more than is modest and seemly.
Come, Janet; we will practise state--we will go to the withdrawing-room,
my good girl, and thou shalt put these rebel locks in order, and
imprison within lace and cambric the bosom that beats too high."
They went to the withdrawing apartment accordingly, where the Countess
playfully stretched herself upon the pile of Moorish cushions, half
sitting, half reclining, half wrapt in her own thoughts, half listening
to the prattle of her attendant.
While she was in this attitude, and with a corresponding expression
betwixt listlessness and expectation on her fine and intelligent
features, you might have searched sea and land without finding anything
half so expressive or half so lovely. The wreath of brilliants which
mixed with her dark-brown hair did not match in lustre the hazel eye
which a light-brown eyebrow, pencilled with exquisite delicacy, and long
eyelashes of the same colour, relieved and shaded. The exercise she had
just taken, her excited expectation and gratified vanity, spread a glow
over her fine features, which had been sometimes censured (as beauty
as well as art has her minute critics) for being rather too pale. The
milk-white pearls of the necklace which she wore, the same which she had
just received as a true-love token from her husband, were excelled in
purity by her teeth, and by the colour of her skin, saving where the
blush of pleasure and self-satisfaction had somewhat stained the neck
with a shade of light crimson.--"Now, have done with these busy fingers,
Janet," she said to her handmaiden, who was still officiously employed
in bringing her hair and her dress into order--"have done, I say. I must
see your father ere my lord arrives, and also Master Richard Varney,
whom my lord has highly in his esteem--but I could tell that of him
would lose him favour."