"Yes. I don't believe that you were
ever really engaged to your cousin Mountjoy."
"No, I never was," she answered, briskly. Harry Annesley was certainly a
handsome man, but no young man living ever thought less of his own
beauty. He had fair, wavy hair, which he was always submitting to some
barber, very much to the unexpressed disgust of poor Florence; because
to her eyes the longer the hair grew the more beautiful was the wearer
of it. His forehead, and eyes, and nose were all perfect in their form--
"Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command."
There was a peculiar brightness in his eye, which would have seemed to
denote something absolutely great in his character had it not been for
the wavering indecision of his mouth. There was as it were a vacillation
in his lips which took away from the manliness of his physiognomy.
Florence, who regarded his face as almost divine, was yet conscious of
some weakness about his mouth which she did not know how to interpret.
But yet, without knowing why it was so, she was accustomed to expect
from him doubtful words, half expressed words, which would not declare
to her his perfected thoughts--as she would have them declared.
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