er Marty or the old peasant who brought turf to her door in creels
on a donkey's back? But she wore it always without any cap, tied in a
simple knot behind her head. Whether chignons had been invented then the
author does not remember,--but they certainly had not become common on
the coast of County Clare, and the peasants about Liscannor thought Mrs.
O'Hara's head of hair the finest they had ever seen. Had the ladies Quin
of the Castle possessed such hair as that, they would not have been
the ladies Quin to this day. Her eyes were lustrous, dark, and very
large,--beautiful eyes certainly; but they were eyes that you might
fear. They had been softer perhaps in youth, before the spirit of the
tiger had been roused in the woman's bosom by neglect and ill-usage. Her
face was now bronzed by years and weather. Of her complexion she took no
more care than did the neighbouring fishermen of theirs, and the winds
and the salt water, and perhaps the working of her own mind, had told
upon it, to make it rough and dark. But yet there was a colour in her
cheeks, as we often see in those of wandering gipsies, which would make
a man stop to regard her who had eyes appreciative of beauty. Her nose
was well formed,--a heaven-made nose, and not a lump of flesh stuck on
to the middle of her face as women's noses sometimes are;--but it was
somewhat short and broad at the nostrils, a nose that could imply much
anger, and perhaps tenderness also. Her face below her nose was very
short. Her mouth was large, but laden with expression. Her lips were
full and her teeth perfect as pearls. Her chin was short and perhaps now
verging to that size which we call a double chin, and marked by as broad
a dimple as ever Venus made with her finger on the face of a woman.

She had ever been strong and active, and years in that retreat had told
upon her not at all. She would still walk to Liscannor, and thence
round, when the tide was low, beneath the cliffs, and up by a path which
the boys had made from the foot through the rocks to the summit, though
the distance was over ten miles, and the ascent was very steep. She
would remain for hours on the rocks, looking down upon the sea, when
the weather was almost at its roughest. When the winds were still, and
the sun was setting across the ocean, and the tame waves were only just
audible as they rippled on the stones below, she would sit there with
her child, holding the girl's hand or just touching her arm, and