University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

One cheerful autumnal morning, six years ago, a group of lovely
girls was assembled in a window of a fashionable boarding school in
one of the handsomest streets crossing Mount Vernon. One or two
of them were seated with embroidery in their hands, but the rest were
standing and talking, and amusing themselves by watching the passers
by; for there was yet an idle quarter of an hour to recitations.

`Do see that poor old man! how white his hair is, and how he
bends beneath his years, while that empty bag he carries seems a load
for him,' said a pretty blue-eyed girl in a tone of deep sympathy, with
which the expression of her face sweetly harmonized. `Open the
window Ann, and let me throw to him a quarter of a dollar. I never
see an old silver-haired man, but what I think of my dear grandfather,
and for his sake love and pity him.'

`I can never see any thing romantic in an old ragged beggar,' said
a tall, grey-eyed girl with a very high forehead, and a look like one
of Miss Radcliffe's heroines: `if he was an aged minstrel, with a robe
and staff, and flowing locks of silver, and had a harp in his hand, and
sandals on his feet, how delightful it would be! I wish I had lived
in days of chivalry, these modern times are too common place.'

`I am content to live when and where my life will be most a blessing
to those around me,' said the first speaker with animation. `Do
open the window, Aunt, as you are near the spring, and let me throw
him the money. See, he has stopped and lifts up his aged eyes. Did
you ever behold such a look of eloquent pleading?'

`How much enthusiasm for a mere every day pauper!' said Miss
Letitia, the romantic girl, with a toss of her head.

The window was thrown up; and the example set by the benevolent
girl being followed by the others, the old man received into his torn
hat a shower of silver pieces. How lovely is charity in the young and
beautiful!

The aged beggar lifted up his venerable countenance with a grateful
look, bowed his bared and hoary head low to the pavement, and
saying in a trembling voice, `God bless you, young ladies,' went on
his way.

While the window was still up, and they were looking after his feeble
steps—for we all feel an interest in the objects of our charity—a
young gentleman, well mounted upon a dark bay horse came dashing
along. He was handsome, of a manly figure, and dressed and rode
well.

`Do shut the window down, girls,' said one of the young ladies,
laughing and retreating; `he will certainly think we have opened it on
purpose to look at him; and I don't choose to let any young gentleman
have such vain thoughts of himself—for they are vain enough
now. See he is looking this way.'

The young horseman seeing a bevy of pretty girls at an open window,
could not well help looking at them very earnestly. Suddenly
he half reined up, his features became animated with a look of surprise
and happy recognition, and bowing with the deepest reverence while
his face crimsoned with embarrassment and joy, he continued on his
way towards the avenue, at the same pace at which he had been before
going.

`He bowed to some one of us! who knows him?' said they all.

`Not a soul I believe—he thought we were foolishly admiring him,
and so impudently acknowledged it,' said another.

`No, he looked as if he recognized one of us. Let us see who looks
conscious, as no one will speak,' said Auna Linton; `look at Alice
May's face. See her blushes and confusion. She is the one.'

Instantly every eye was fixed upon a young dark-eyed brunette not
more than seventeen years of age, whose delicately olive shaded complexion
was incardined with the richest blood. Her long-fringed eye-lids
were cast to the floor, and she stood silent, beautiful, conscious
—her pretty fingers picking in pieces a rose bud. Never was a maiden
of seventeen lovelier than she who now stood confessed before
them, the shrine of the handsome horseman's adoring reverence.—

The raven hair which the womanly comb had never descrated, flowed
darkly beautiful in glossy waves about her finely shaped head and
throat. Her form was singularly graceful, every motion yielding to
the eye a new shape of beauty. The exquisite finish of her arm and
hand would have made Canova an idolater. her features were faultless.
Her low, gentle brow, with its dark, arching eyebrows, `like
two delicate feathers plucked from the black breast of the singing
ummill,' was a throne of serenity and beauty. Never were such eyes
as beamed beneath; large, languid, gentle, and, but for the purity of
the soul within, voluptuous. Passion was there, but in the shape of
love yet vestal and unawakened. The young and happy heart with
all its guileless emotions unveiled and open, was ever drawing in them,
to gladden the hearts of all around her. None beheld her but they
loved her. She was the idol of the school, and the friend of all.

All conscious the lovely girl stood before them, and her downcast
eyes and attitude told a tale each was dying to get at the mystery
of.

`Oh, where did you see him?'

`Where did you know him, Alice?'

`Is he from the south—an old lover?'

`Don't stand there blushing and making yourself look so wickedly
lovely. Do tell us,' were the questions with which she was over-whelmed.

Alice, however, laughed and blushed only the deeper, and breaking
away from them fled to her room.