Still very young, and gifted with an imaginative and therefore
sanguine mind, the course of circumstances, however, had checked her
native spirit, and shaded a brow which, at her time of life and with
her temperament, should have been rather fanciful than pensive. If
Venetia, supported by the disciplined energies of a strong mind, had
schooled herself into not looking back to the past with grief, her
future was certainly not tinged with the Iris pencil of Hope. It
seemed to her that it was her fate that life should bring her no
happier hours than those she now enjoyed. They did not amount to
exquisite bliss. That was a conviction which, by no process of
reflection, however ingenious, could she delude herself to credit.
Venetia struggled to take refuge in content, a mood of mind perhaps
less natural than it should be to one so young, so gifted, and so
fair!
Their villa was surrounded by a garden in the ornate and artificial
style of the country. A marble terrace overlooked the lake, crowned
with many a statue and vase that held the aloe. The laurel and the
cactus, the cypress and the pine, filled the air with their fragrance,
or charmed the eye with their rarity and beauty: the walks were
festooned with the vine, and they could raise their hands and pluck
the glowing fruit which screened them, from the beam by which, it was
ripened.
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