Joseph Wilmot, or, The Memoirs of a Man-Servant — page 216: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“ JOSEPH WILMOT; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A MAN-SERVANT. 203 drawing-room with the Chief: for he was not alone | arched the eyes in so admirable a manner as to there. Three other persons were with him: his , complete the perfection of those features.. I should son—his niece—and a queer-looking old gentle- add to this portraiture, that the features them- man, who was called the Dominie. selyes, though presenting a classic regularity of First, then, of the son—who bore the Christian profile, nevertheless had that. Madonna-like round. name of Lennox. He was as much a counterpart | ness and softness which the old masters have de- of the father as youth can possibly be of age. Not | lineated in their pictures; and it was this exquisite more than three-and-twenty, Lennox Vennachar | feminine delicacy—this even girlish ingenuousness was one of the finest young men I had ever seen in | which those features expressed—that, if not coun- my life. Nearly six feet high, with a form of noble | teracting, at least subdued the noble dignity which masculine development, and yet proportioned to | sat upon the expanse of the brow. When sur- the most admirable symmetry,—he was a perfect | veying her, it was at. first only the more tender model of his sex. His fine features, cast in the | characteristics of her loveliness. that would rivet same mould as those of his sire, had precisely the | attention: it was not till afterwards, and when same expression—hauteur mingling with gene-| she was oftener seen, that the natural power of rosity, pride attempered by a natural magna-/| the intellect might be fully discerned, as it was nimity of soul. His hair was of raven darkness, | stamped on the fine forehead. When viewed in curling naturally, and parted above a high broad | front, the face was a full one, owing to the plump- forehead. His eyes were also dark—expressive | ness of the cheeks: and yet with that pearly and full of fire. His glossy black whiskers, meet- | transparency of complexion, and the delicate tint ing under his chin, were so shaped as to leave his | of the rose, it was impossible to associate the idea countenance a complete oval, when viewed from | of a buxom beauty with the soft pleasing charms the front: his teeth, somewhat large, were of | of that countenance. She was above the middle ivory whiteness; while his complexion, with its | height of woman—admirably formed—with a shape rich brown tint upon the cheeks, showed that he | which, already full, gave promise of richness of was no mere drawing-room lounger, but was at-| proportions. Yet this slight tendency to embon- tached to the manly sports which the boats on the | point was carried off, as it were, by the elegant neighbouring lake, and the opportunities for the | lightness. and exquisite grace of her movements, chase in the glens or on the moors and mountains | the swan-like curvature of the neck, and the of his father’s princely domain, everywhere af-| statuesque manner in which the head was poised forded. thereon. Altogether she was the loveliest creature, But what pen can describe the ravishing beauty | next to Annabel, that. I had ever seen; and there of the young creature of eighteen, by whose side | Was so much goodness, so much kindness, s0 much Lennox Vennachar sat upon a sofa? This was gentleness in her looks, that.ii was impossible not Emmeline Vennachar, the chieftain’s niece—and | to feel interested in Emmeline Vennachar. consequently the young gentleman’s cousin. Of| It is necessary I should observe that this young all the fair fowers of the earth, to my eyes Anna- | lady had been an orphan since her earliest. infancy. bel was tre toveliest; but assuredly Emmeline | Indeed, it cannot be said that she had ever known came uext .. the array of beauty. Her complexion | her parents: for her mother died a few months after was so delicately fair—so exquisitely transparent, | her birth; and her father, who was a. General- that even there, in the Highlands—where the | officer, had sailed for the East Indies when she was winters are so bleak and the summers so embrown- | still in her cradle. In that oriental clime he had ing—it still retained its purity unimpaired. The | met his death, in one of the expeditions which virgin whiteness of the camelia outvied not that | were undertaken against the native princes,— complexion,—save where the tint of the rose | leaving his infant daughter to, the charge of his delicately shaded the cheeks until dying off into, brother, the Chief of Inch. Methglin, and with a the surrounding pearly fairness of the skin. Her | small fortune of some few thousand pounds. Em- eyes were of a deep blue—large and liquid, and | meline had therefore been reared by her relatives: wearing a somewhat thoughtful but serene expres- | and kindly had they performed the task. The Chief sion. But this expression suited well with the | had a horror of schools, either for boys. or girls; nobleness of intellect which was stamped upon the | and a governess had therefore been entrusted with high open alabaster brow. That glory of wtelli- | the education of Miss Vennachar, until the pupil} gence,—a diadem which Nature only bestows | reached the age of sixteen. She had not however upon her elect,—imparted nothing masculine to | remained all her life at the mansion in the midst the countenance, but merely a feminine dignity,— | of the lake: she had visited Edinburgh and other which in its turn was subdued by the softness and | Scotch cities and towns with her relations; and ingenuousness of the whole face. Her hair was | after her education was terminated, had passed up- of dark brown, with the richest natural gloss upon | wards of a year in the Caledonian capital. There, it, and falling in tresses on either side of that beau- | by mingling in the very best society, her manners teous countenance,—those tresses resting upon | and her tastes had acquired that polish which they shoulders white as snow, or floating upon a bust | could not well have otherwise obtained amidst the which though full, was in perfect keeping with the | somewhat ruder and less refined society which she other proportions of her form, Her lips were of | found in the Highlands. a vivid scarlet, with a dewy moisture upon them;| The third person to whom I haye alluded as and between those coral lines might be obtained | being in the drawing-room at the time I made my glimpses of teeth of a dazzling polish, like rows of | first bow to my new master, was Dominie Clack- pearls, and faultlessly even. The eyes were fringed | mannan. He was some two or three years older by long ebon lashes, which made those orbs of deep | than the Chief—that is to say, on the shady blue seem even darker than they were ;—and the | side of sixty; but in, his own way he wore his brows, also dark, but delicately pencilled, over, years as well as Inch Methglin himself. A most CORNICLOO@ SS (CO) im