Chapter 10 - Page 2

side of
the knights' hall, had an iron balcony at a giddy height from the ground,
and in this airy look-out Adelheid had taken her seat, when, after
quitting her father, she mounted to the apartment common to all the guests
of the castle.

We have already alluded generally to the personal appearance and to the
moral qualities of the Baron de Willading's daughter, but we now conceive
it necessary to make the reader more intimately acquainted with one who is
destined to act no mean part in the incidents of our tale. It has been
said that she was pleasing to the eye, but her beauty was of a kind that
depended more on expression, on a union of character with feminine grace,
than on the vulgar lines of regularity and symmetry. While she had no
feature that was defective, she had none that was absolutely faultless,
though all were combined with so much harmony and the soft expression of
the mild blue eye accorded so well with the gentle play of a sweet mouth,
that the soul of their owner seemed ready at all times to appear through
these ingenuous tell-tales of her thoughts. Still, maidenly reserve sate
in constant watch over all, and it was when the spectator thought himself
most in communion with her spirit, that he most felt its pure and
correcting influence. Perhaps a cast of high intelligence, of a natural
power to discriminate, which much surpassed the limited means accorded to
females of that age, contributed their share to hold those near her in
respect, and served in some degree as a mild and wise repellant, to
counteract the attractions of her gentleness and candor. In short, one
cast unexpectedly in her society would not have been slow to infer, and he
would have decided correctly, that Adelheid de Willading was a girl of
warm and tender affections, of a playful but regulated fancy, of a firm
and lofty sense of all her duties, whether natural or merely the result of
social obligations, of melting pity, and yet of a habit and quality to
think and act for herself, in all those cases in which it was fitting for
a maiden of her condition and years to assume such self-control.

It was now more than a year since Adelheid had become fully sensible of
the force of her attachment for Sigismund Steinbach, and during all that
time she had struggled hard to overcome a feeling which she believed could
lead to no happy result. The declaration of the young man himself, a
declaration that was extorted involuntarily and in a moment of powerful
passion, was accompanied by an admission of its uselessness and folly, and
it first opened her eyes to the state of her own feelings. Though she had
listened, as all of her sex will listen, even when the passion is
hopeless, to such words coming from lips they love, it was with a