Charity was the natural atmosphere of her kind and feeling soul--always excusing, assisting, comforting, blessing; charity lent music to her tongue, and added beauty to her eyes--charity gave grace to an otherwise ordinary figure, and lit her freckled cheek with the spirit of loveliness.

Let us be just--nay, more: let us be partial, to the good looks of poor dear Maria.

Notwithstanding the snub nose (it is not snub; who says it is snub ?--it is _mignon_, personified good nature)--notwithstanding the carroty hair (I declare, it was nothing but a fine pale auburn after all)--notwithstanding the peppered face (oh, how sweetly rayed with smiles!) and the common figure (gentle, unobtrusive, full of delicate attentions)--yes, notwithstanding all these unheroinals, no one who had a heart himself could look upon Maria without pleasure and approval.

She was the very incarnation of cheerfulness, kindness, and love: you forgot the greenish colour of those eyes which looked so tenderly at you, and so often-times were dimmed with tears of unaffected pity; her smile, at any rate, was most enchanting, the very sunshine of an amiable mind; her lips dropped blessings; her brow was an open plain of frankness and candour; sincerity, warmth, disinterested sweet affections threw such a lustre of loveliness over her form, as well might fascinate the mind alive to spiritual beauty: and altogether, in spite of natural defects and disadvantages--_nez retrousse_, Cleopatra locks, and all--no one but those constituted like her materialized father and his kind, ever looked upon Maria without unconsciously admiring her, he scarcely knew for what.

Though there appeared little to praise, there certainly was every thing to please; and faulty as in all pictorial probability was each lineament of face and line of form, taken separately and by detail, the veil of universal charity softened and united them into one harmonious whole, making of Maria Dillaway a most pleasant, comfortable, wife-like little personage.
At least, so thought Henry Clements.