his type of
womanhood before--such energy and grace, so amply yet so lithely
framed; such darkness and fairness in one living composition; such
individuality, yet such intimate simplicity. Her hair was a very light
brown, sweeping over a broad, low forehead, and lying, as though with
a sense of modesty, on the tips of the ears, veiling them slightly. The
forehead was classic in its intellectual fulness; but the skin was so
fresh, even when pale as now, and with such an underglow of vitality,
that the woman in her, sex and the possibilities of sex, cast a glamour
over the intellect and temperament showing in every line of her contour.
In contrast to the light brown of the hair was the very dark brown of
the eyes and the still darker brown of the eyelashes. The face shone,
the eyes burned, and the piquancy of the contrast between the soft
illuminating whiteness of the skin and the flame in the eyes had
fascinated many more than Ingolby.

Her figure was straight yet supple, somewhat fuller than is modern
beauty, with hints of Juno-like stateliness to come; and the curves
of her bust, the long lines of her limbs, were not obscured by her
absolutely plain gown of soft, light-brown linen. She was tall, but not
too commanding, and, as her hand was raised to fasten back a wisp of
hair, there was the motion of as small a wrist and as tapering a bare
arm as ever made prisoner of a man's neck.

Impulse was written in every feature, in the passionate eagerness of
her body; yet the line from the forehead to the chin, and the firm
shapeliness of the chin itself, gave promise of great strength of will.
From the glory of the crown of hair to the curve of the high instep of
a slim foot it was altogether a personality which hinted at history--at
tragedy, maybe.

"She'll have a history," Madame Bulteel, who now stood beside the girl,
herself a figure out of a picture by Velasquez, had said of her sadly;
for she saw in Fleda's rare qualities, in her strange beauty, happenings
which had nothing to do with the life she was living. So this duenna of
Gabriel Druse's household, this aristocratic, silent woman was ever
on the watch for some sudden revelation of a being which had not found
itself, and which must find itself through perils and convulsions.

That was why, to-day, she had hesitated to leave Fleda alone and come
to Carillon, to be at the bedside of a dying, friendless woman whom by
chance she had come to know. In the street she h