that the soul which was
their soul, comprehended an universe of thought in its ken. She was pale
and fair, and her golden hair clustered on her temples, contrasting its
rich hue with the living marble beneath. Her coarse peasant-dress, little
consonant apparently with the refinement of feeling which her face
expressed, yet in a strange manner accorded with it. She was like one of
Guido's saints, with heaven in her heart and in her look, so that when you
saw her you only thought of that within, and costume and even feature were
secondary to the mind that beamed in her countenance.

Yet though lovely and full of noble feeling, my poor Perdita (for this was
the fanciful name my sister had received from her dying parent), was not
altogether saintly in her disposition. Her manners were cold and repulsive.
If she had been nurtured by those who had regarded her with affection, she
might have been different; but unloved and neglected, she repaid want of
kindness with distrust and silence. She was submissive to those who held
authority over her, but a perpetual cloud dwelt on her brow; she looked as
if she expected enmity from every one who approached her, and her actions
were instigated by the same feeling. All the time she could command she
spent in solitude. She would ramble to the most unfrequented places, and
scale dangerous heights, that in those unvisited spots she might wrap
herself in loneliness. Often she passed whole hours walking up and down the
paths of the woods; she wove garlands of flowers and ivy, or watched the
flickering of the shadows and glancing of the leaves; sometimes she sat
beside a stream, and as her thoughts paused, threw flowers or pebbles into
the waters, watching how those swam and these sank; or she would set afloat
boats formed of bark of trees or leaves, with a feather for a sail, and
intensely watch the navigation of her craft among the rapids and shallows
of the brook. Meanwhile her active fancy wove a thousand combinations; she
dreamt "of moving accidents by flood and field"--she lost herself
delightedly in these self-created wanderings, and returned with unwilling
spirit to the dull detail of common life. Poverty was the cloud that veiled
her excellencies, and all that was good in her seemed about to perish from
want of the genial dew of affection. She had not even the same advantage as
I in the recollection of her parents; she clung to me, her brother, as her
only friend, but her alliance wit