At these periods, he had
frequent occasion to admire the lively spirit and inventive
imagination of the latter damsel, who was unwearied in her
contrivances to amuse her mistress, and to banish, for a time at
least, the melancholy which preyed on her bosom. She danced, she sung,
she recited tales of ancient and modern times, with that heartfelt
exertion of talent, of which the pleasure lies not in the vanity of
displaying it to others, but in the enthusiastic consciousness that we
possess it ourselves. And yet these high accomplishments were mixed
with an air of rusticity and harebrained vivacity, which seemed rather
to belong to some village maid, the coquette of the ring around the
Maypole, than to the high-bred descendant of an ancient baron. A touch
of audacity, altogether short of effrontery, and far less approaching
to vulgarity, gave as it were a wildness to all that she did; and
Mary, while defending her from some of the occasional censures of her
grave companion, compared her to a trained singing-bird escaped from a
cage, which practises in all the luxuriance of freedom, and in full
possession of the greenwood bough, the airs which it had learned
during its earlier captivity.
The moments which the page was permitted to pass in the presence of
this fascinating creature, danced so rapidly away, that, brief as they
were, they compensated the weary dulness of all the rest of the day.
The space of indulgence, however, was always brief, nor were any
private interviews betwixt him and Catharine permitted, or even
possible.
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