124 A BALL ROOM, AND A BELLE. 



Fairfax liad discovered, immedi^-tely on his entrance, 

 the only two lady acquaintances he had made at Mel- 

 ton, the dark-flashing Cheshire, and the sweet languid 

 Isabella at the upper end of the room, and had been 

 discovered in turn, as the slight nod and smiling glance 

 and wafting of the welcoming fan told him ; and he 

 w\as making his way slowly toward them through the 

 highborn throng, who were all by chance streaming in 

 the same direction, when a pair glided sidelong into 

 the string close before him, so that he could only see 

 their backs, who yet rivetted for a moment his atten- 

 tion. The gentleman was young, and much like other 

 young gentlemen, but there was that about the female 

 figure that could not have been overlooked in any 

 crowded mart of beauty. 



It was only her back that met the eye of Fairfax, 

 but he was a connoisseur in female charms, and even 

 from that slight glance, he knew that she before him 

 was a perfect woman. A figure considerably above 

 the middle stature, for her classically shaped and ex- 

 quisitely set on head rose far above her partner's shoul- 

 der, coukl not have been called tall, so perfectly was it 

 proportioned ; a long rounded swan-like neck, broad, 

 sloping shoulders, white and firm as Parian marble, 

 with a soft, satin skin, so plump and dimpled that they 

 wooed the touch almost irresistibly ; a waist shaped to 

 love's wish, not whaleboned into deformity, as every 

 supple and sinuous motion showed, but capable to fill 

 the arms of an Antinous ; a fall of white satin dra- 

 peries below, so fully flowing in lines so serpentine and 

 suggestive that the perfection of the form and motion 

 they concealed could not be questioned; a mass of 

 silky, glistening braids knotted low down at the nape 

 with a flood of mazy ringlets of half dishe"velled hair, 

 of that pale, pale brown which but for its golden ra- 

 diance would be called flaxen, waving beside each rosy 

 ear quite to the shoulder ; a pair of white dimpled 



