Roxy Hastings — page 250: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ROXY HASTINGS, 241 There are Alfred and Lucy, who call themselves old married people now, but who look quite as much like bride and groom as the other blooming couples with whose joy they so fully sympathize. . There is the widow Hastings, the picture of serenity, with laughing Tom Selby and his wife, who are all quite sure, and they whispered it among themselves, that little Roxy is the sweetest, prettiest bride of the three. There is old George Eldon, thawed out of his habitual glum into something like geniality, and his timid, but now jubilant wife, quite beginning to reassert herself, in view of dear Lewy’s success in winning so lovely a bride, and stepping at once into so high a social position. Had he not justified her hopes and predictions? And who shall say how her unspoken joy was augmented as she gazed at him by the remembrance of that dreadful day when she had been compelled to believe her dear boy a felon and an outcast. | There are Celia, and Mary Ann, and Irene, gentle, bash- ful girls, with a fair show of charms, but destined here- after to be successively brought out from their chrysalis state, under the patronage of their distinguished sister-in- law. There are Mrs. Holden and her daughters, Fanny and Grace, happier than in their best estate, and scarcely re- gretting the lost wealth which brought them so little pleas- ure, but they have come without the humbled Mark, who has no longer a heart for scenes of gayety. And what shall we say of the Widow Lee, whose expres- sive features are all alive with the bliss with which her kind, loving heart is overflowing, or, of the tranquil and exultant major, who, in his easy-chair, receives every- body’s congratulations, and looks a very patriarch among the merry throng. In the spacious halls place.is found for the domestics to take a glance at the festivities, and among them is seen the honest face of old Luke, who is dressed in a ministerial suit of black, and whose gray hair, falling over his coat — collar, gives him quite a venerable look. Louis and Alfred hear of his presence—they rush out and grasp his hands—they persuade him by long coaxing to enter the parlors, where they place him triumphantly be- side the approving old major, in just such another chair, and he becomes one of the lions of the evening. Every one knows his story, but there are few of the com- pany who have seen him before, and as the crowd thickens (C6) EomIichbooks