autiful.

She and Angelo had evidently just entered from the garden. Her right
hand was full of roses, which she hastily changed into her left, and she
wore a softly folding white dress, with a great cart-wheel of a Leghorn
hat, drooping in all the right places, and wreathed with pink roses. She
was a tall woman with a long neck, therefore could well wear such a
hat; and it framed her head like an immense halo of dull gold. Her hair
was brown with red lights in it, and her eyes were of exactly the same
shade, the colour of ripe chestnuts. She had a beautiful short, rather
square face, of a creamy paleness; a square, low forehead, straight dark
brows, drawn very low over the long eyes; a short, straight nose, and a
short, curved upper lip, fitting so charmingly into the full squareness
of the under lip that her mouth looked like two pieces of pink coral
cleverly carved one upon another. Her short, square chin was deeply
cleft, and her long yet solid-looking white throat was like one of those
slender marble columns which divide the arch of a Moorish window. At
first sight, before she spoke, she would be taken for a woman of
sensuous temperament, lazy, luxury-loving, not talkative, and the gay
smile which flashed over her face at sight of Vanno and the cure seemed
somehow unsuited to it, giving almost the effect of electric light
suddenly turned upon a still pool, covered with the waxen weight of
white water-lilies. Her manner, too, was a contradiction of her type. It
had a light, sleigh-bell gayety, bringing thoughts of sparkling snows
and iced sunshine. There was charm in it, yet it was oddly remote and
cold, as if she, the woman herself, had gone away on an errand, leaving
some other woman's spirit in temporary charge of her body. She looked to
be twenty-five or six, and was meant by nature to be more dignified than
she chose to be. She had elected to be light and girlish; and whatever
she was, it was evident that in her husband's eyes she was perfect. He
watched her admiringly, adoringly, as she welcomed her brother-in-law
and the cure. The love in his eyes was pathetic, and would have been
tragic if it had not been a happy love, fully returned, and culminating
in a perfect marriage.

Angelo was delighted to see his brother, and especially to see him come
in with their old friend the cure. This meant, he hoped, that the good
man had found a chance to talk to Vanno, and perhaps to persuade him to
stay at the Villa Mira