THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 243 



watery cloud, but obscured nearly as suddenly as it bursts 

 forth. Such vicissitudes as these, however, are fearful 

 lessons to all possessors of wealth and honours ; and their 

 participation in them tends to render those who possess 

 not such dazzling appearances more satisfied and contented 

 with their lot. But Lady Charlotte's trial was not yet 

 completed. Having constantly present to her inind the 

 figure of her departed son during his illness the deep 

 red hectic spot that burned in the centre of his cheek ; 

 the skin of his forehead of that transparent white which 

 added the mockery of beauty to the ravages of disease ; 

 his bright brown hair having that silken flow peculiar 

 to persons of delicate frame ; his form wasted to a fearful 

 thinness to the utmost extent, indeed, to which the 

 human frame can be reduced without being dissolved ; 

 and in his gait, the flat-footed tread of weakness, instead 

 of the bounding step of youth which once was his ; when 

 dwelling upon this sad picture, then, and viewing it, as 

 she did, through the medium of a morbid imagination, 

 natural though we may allow it to have been, for, as 

 the poet says 



"When trees do drop their fruits in autumn ripeness, 

 Tis Nature's common course, and so we look on't ; 

 But when unseasonous frosts nip promising buds, 

 And lovely blossoms, then the heart grows sad 

 To see those troth -plights of much after riches 

 Untimely broken ; " 



she ever and anon fancied that signs of the same insidious 

 complaint were visible in the person of her eldest daughter, 

 just budding into womanhood. Then her imagination was 

 strengthened and her fears increased by having read in 

 books that there is a sacred halo round those whom we 

 see in the bloom of years destined for the grave, and even 

 that bugbear as it might be would occasionally present 

 itself to her diseased mind. Here, however, her prayers 

 were heard, and the cup of bitterness was not suffered to 

 overflow. Nature came to the relief of one of the fairest 

 of her creatures : as the frame of Miss Raby expanded, 

 her strength proportionately increased, and in three years 

 from the period to which we are alluding, there were not 

 two healthier nor handsomer young ladies than herself in 

 her own county, or in the next. The health and spirits of 

 her amiable and once beautiful mother also revived to 



