Montague DE Courcy had dined tête-à-tête with an old uncle from whom he had no expectations, and was returning home to sup quietly with his mother and sister, when his progress was arrested by a group occupying the whole breadth of the pavement, and he heard a female voice, which, though unusually musical, had in it less of entreaty than of command, say, ‘Pray, Sir, allow us to pass.’ ‘Not till I have seen the face that belongs to such a figure,’ answered one of a party of young men who were rudely obstructing the passage of the lady who had spoken. With this condition, however, she seemed not to intend compliance; for she had doubled her veil, and pertinaciously resisted the attempts of her persecutor to raise it.

De Courcy had a rooted antipathy to all manner of violence and oppression, especially when exercised against the more defenceless part of the creation; and he no sooner ascertained these circumstances, than, with one thrust of his muscular arm, (which, to say the truth, was more than a match for half a dozen of the puny fry of sloth and intemperance), he opened a passage for the lady and her companion; steadily detained her tormentors till she made good her retreat; and then, leaving the gentlemen to answer, as they best could, to their own interrogatories of ‘What do you mean?’ and ‘Who the d—l are you?’ he followed the rescued damsel, with whose appearance, considering the place and the hour, he was extremely surprized.

Her height, which certainly rose above the beautiful, perhaps even exceeded the majestic; her figure, though slender, was admirably proportioned, and had all the appropriate roundness of the feminine form; her dress, though simple, and of matronly decency, was not unfashionable; while the dignity of her gait, and the composure of her motion, suited well with the majesty of her stature and mien.