The miniature, which in youthful pride he carried about him, might seem a highly finished likeness from life itself, and yet it was but a copy of an original taken of Mrs. De Brooke when about the age of Rosilia, and which then bore to the daughter, as it had formerly to the mother, a near resemblance. From the affection she felt for her young friend, Mrs. Herbert had borrowed the picture of Mrs. De Brooke with the view of gratifying herself with a copy of it. A celebrated artist, with whom she was acquainted, had readily conferred upon her this favour.
Delighted with the performance, and the fulfilment of her wishes, upon returning the original to Mrs. De Brooke, she showed the copy to her son, who contrived to make it his own, by getting it set in gold; and from which time, giving way, through the tender recollections of the past, and the ambititious views of his mother, to a presumptuous delusion and ill-founded hope, it had thus become the companion of his bosom.
The extreme agitation betrayed by Douglas at its sudden exposure to his sight, clearly evinced the strong rivalship existing between them; and when Herbert contemplated in Douglas something to his juvenile conceptions surpassing the generality of mortals, he was struck with amazement that a man of such striking elegance, in the ripened flower and
