This was a woman of exceeding beauty, rather gaily than richly attired, who sat on a low seat close by the huge hall chimney. The gold chains round her neck and arms,—the gay gown of green which swept the floor,—the silver embroidered girdle, with its bunch of keys, depending in house-wifely pride by a silver chain,—the yellow silken couvrechef (Scottice, curch) which was disposed around her head, and partly concealed her dark profusion of hair,—above all, the circumstance so delicately touched in the old ballad, that “the girdle was too short,” the “gown of green all too strait,” for the wearer’s present shape, would have intimated the Baron’s lady. But then the lowly seat,—the expression of deep melancholy, which was changed into a timid smile whenever she saw the least chance of catchin
