Sink or Swim? , Volume III

It is unfortunate perhaps, and decidedly suggestive, but so it undoubtedly is, that beauty leads the wisest amongst us terribly astray in our judgment both of character and motives. What observer, dispassionate or otherwise, who looked -- were such a privilege granted to him -- at lovely Honor's face and form, lying indolently, lazily if you will, upon her narrow couch (the iron bedstead in the Stanwick-street lodging), would have been able to allow, without infinite regret and caution, either that she was _wrong_, or the least in the world deserving of punishment? A creamy complexion, slightly tinged with the most delicate of rose-colours; a tumbled mass of fairest brown hair -- "off the flax and _on_ the golden," as Miss Pratt would say; blue eyes, "languid with soft dreams; " and full crimson lips, moist with the morning dew of youth and health, -- composed a sum of attractions very decidedly calculated to disarm criticism, and to modify the verdict of "Guilty" with the strongest recommendations to mercy. "Youth" and "previous good conduct" were pleas which might be safely urged as extenuating circumstances in the case of poor Honor Beacham's feminine sin of truth-suppressing; and as with her fair face slightly flushed, and her long brown eyelashes sparkling with indignant tears, she read, for the second time, a letter which Lydia (alias Polly), cross and out of breath with the labour of mounting the attic stairs, had just deposited on the bed, it was easy to perceive that the process of retribution had already, in some sort, commenced.

That letter, as the reader will have no difficulty in guessing, was the one mentioned in the conclusion of the last chapter as the happy result of old Mrs. Beacham's interference with the connubial relations of her children. It took the well-meaning woman, as we already know, two hours in its concoction, and ran as follows: