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ROMANCE AND REALITY.
115

writer of a fairy tale, while laying down plans for her future destiny.

"Pray, have you agreed to group for a picture?" said Mr. Morland, who, with Lord Mandeville, entered the room just as Emily read the last line of the Lady of the Lake; and it was a question De Hooge might have asked; for one of those breaks of sunshine, so like reality in his pictures, came from the half-opened glass door, and fell full on the large old crimson arm-chair, where Lady Mandeville was seated with a little work-table before her, at which she was threading those brilliant and diminutive beads which would make fitting chain armour for the fairy king and his knights. The rest of the apartment was filled with that soft green light where the noon is excluded by Venetian blinds, or the still softer shadow of creeping plants: and here, on the south side of the house, a vine had been trained, which, luxuriant and unpruned, seemed better calculated for foliage than for fruit: a green basket-stand, filled with pots of early roses, stood between the windows—and so near, that their crimson reflected on the face of the young boy who was asleep on the carpet: not so the elder one, who sat at Emily's feet, his cheek