Chapter 16

Anxious, she hovers o'er the web the while,
Reads, as it grows, thy figured story there;
Now she explains the texture with a smile,
And now the woof interprets with a tear.

Fawcett.

All Maud's feelings were healthful and natural. She had no exaggerated
sentiments, and scarcely art enough to control or to conceal any of the
ordinary impulses of her heart. We are not about to relate a scene,
therefore, in which a long-cherished but hidden miniature of the young
man is to play a conspicuous part, and to be the means of revealing to
two lovers the state of their respective hearts; but one of a very
different character. It is true, Maud had endeavoured to make, from
memory, one or two sketches of "Bob's" face; but she had done it
openly, and under the cognizance of the whole family. This she might
very well do, indeed, in her usual character of a sister, and excite no
comments. In these efforts, her father and mother, and Beulah, had
uniformly pronounced her success to be far beyond their hopes; but
Maud, herself, had thrown them all aside, half-finished, dissatisfied
with her own labours. Like the author, whose fertile imagination
fancies pictures that defy his powers of description, her pencil ever
fell far short of the face that her memory kept so constantly in view.
This sketch wanted animation, that gentleness, another fire, and a
fourth candour; in short, had Maud begun a thousand all would have been
deficient, in her eyes, in some great essential of perfection. Still,
she had no secret about her efforts, and half-a-dozen of these very
sketches lay uppermost in her portfolio, when she spread it, and its
contents, before the eyes of the original.

Major Willoughby thought Maud had never appeared more beautiful than as
she moved about making her little preparations for the exhibition.
Pleasure heightened her colour; and there was such a mixture of frank,
sisterly regard, in every glance of her eye, blended, however, with
sensitive feeling, and conscious womanly reserve, as made her a
thousand times--measuring amounts by the young man's sensations--more
interesting than he had ever seen her. The lamp gave but an indifferent
light for a gallery, but it was sufficient to betray Maud's smiles, and
blushes, and each varying emotion of her charming countenance.

"Now, Bob," she said, opening her portfolio, with all her youthful
frankness and confidence, "you know well enough I am not one of those
old masters of whom you used to talk so much, but your own pupil--the
work of your own hands; and if you find more faults than you have
expected, you will have the goodness to remember that the master has
deserted his peaceful pursuits to go a campaigning--there--that is a