uncertain bravery, like a woman's, and a taste for reading, that varied
with the caprice of every hour. He was the beauty of the three, and my
mother's favourite. Never, indeed, have I seen the countenance of man
so perfect, so glowingly yet delicately handsome, as that of Aubrey
Devereux. Locks, soft, glossy, and twining into ringlets, fell in dark
profusion over a brow whiter than marble; his eyes were black and tender
as a Georgian girl's; his lips, his teeth, the contour of his face, were
all cast in the same feminine and faultless mould; his hands would have
shamed those of Madame de la Tisseur, whose lover offered six thousand
marks to any European who could wear her glove; and his figure would
have made Titania give up her Henchman, and the King of the Fairies be
anything but pleased with the exchange.

Such were my two brothers; or, rather (so far as the internal qualities
are concerned), such they seemed to me; for it is a singular fact that
we never judge of our near kindred so well as we judge of others; and I
appeal to any one, whether, of all people by whom he has been mistaken,
he has not been most often mistaken by those with whom he was brought
up.

I had always loved Aubrey, but they had not suffered him to love me; and
we had been so little together that we had in common none of those
childish remembrances which serve, more powerfully than all else in
later life, to cement and soften affection. In fact, I was the
scapegoat of the family. What I must have been in early childhood I
cannot tell; but before I was ten years old I was the object of all the
despondency and evil forebodings of my relations. My father said I
laughed at /la gloire et le grand monarque/ the very first time he
attempted to explain to me the value of the one and the greatness of the
other. The countess said I had neither my father's eye nor her own