LE PORTE-BOUQUET, OR GENIUS AND INGENUITY; AN INCIDENT IN FASHIONABLE LIFE. BY FRANCES S. OSGOOD. CHAPTER I. "Oh! sweet, pale Margaret! Oh! rare, pale Margaret! From the evening-lighted wood, From the westward-winding flood, From all things outward, you have won A tearful grace, as tho' you stood Between the rainbow and the sun."-TENNYSON. A RARE and queenly creature was Margaret Leslie, with her dark blue "luminous eyes," and the superb hair that swept in wavy masses round her brow. She had been passing a few weeks in the country, with a fair cousin of hers-sweet little Lizzie Leroy. And the two beautiful girls stood at the white gate of the pretty cottage, clasped in a farewell embrace, for the carriage was waiting to convey our heroine to the neighbouring city. It was a graceful and picturesque tableau-Lizzie in her girlish frock of white muslin, and Margaret in a dark travelling dress, with a straw hat hanging on her arm, bending that noble form till her pale cheek rested amid the golden-hued curls of her younger companion. Suddenly Lizzie withdrew from her arms, and searched eagerly in the little garden for a flower, as a parting token of tenderness; but the search was vain, and Margaret, who had watched her with a loving smile, as she flitted like a sylph beneath the grape-vines, drew out her pencil and hastily wrote on one of the palings of the gate the following impromptu : "You would speak your farewell by some beautiful flower, And by the way, speaking of impromptus, it was about Lizzie's little hand, playfully placed one day before Margaret's magnificent eyes, that a graceful jeu desprit was written upon the instant, by one who made no pretensions to the name of poet : "Those radiant eyes, that charm the soul, The snow-flake and the hand are one!" Were ever two women, at once, so skilfully complimented within the compass of a quatrain ? |