aced stays are so utterly subversive. Her hair was
very dark--not black, but the darkest shade of brown, and was worn
in simple rolls on the side of her face. It was very long and very
glossy, soft as the richest silk, and gifted apparently with a
delightful aptitude to keep itself in order. No stray jagged ends
would show themselves if by chance she removed her bonnet, nor did it
even look as though it had been prematurely crushed and required to
be afresh puffed out by some head-dresser's mechanism. She had the
forehead of a Juno; white, broad, and straight; not shining as are
some foreheads, which seem as though an insufficient allowance of
skin had been vouchsafed for their covering. It was a forehead on
which an angel might long to press his lips--if angels have lips, and
if, as we have been told, they do occasionally descend from their
starry heights to love the daughters of men.

Nor would an angel with a shade of human passion in his temperament
have been contented with her forehead. Her mouth had all the richness
of youth, and the full enticing curves and ruby colour of Anglo-Saxon
beauty. Caroline Waddington was no pale, passionless goddess; her
graces and perfections were human, and in being so were the more
dangerous to humanity. Her forehead we have said, or should have
said, was perfect; we dare not affirm quite so much in praise of her
mouth: there was sometimes a hardness there, not in the lines of the
feature itself, but in the expression which it conveyed, a want of
tenderness, perhaps of trust, and too much self-confidence, it may
be, for a woman's character. The teeth within it, however, were never
excelled by any that ever graced the face of a woman.

Her nose was not quite Grecian; had it been so, her face might have
been fairer, but it would certainly have been less expressive. Nor
could it be called _retrousse_, but it had the slightest possible
tendency in that direction; and the nostrils were more open, more
ready to breathe forth flashes of indignation than is ever the case
with a truly Grecian nose.

The contour of her face was admirable: nothing could exceed in beauty
the lines of her cheeks or the shape and softness of her chin. Those
who were fastidious in their requirements might object to them that
they bore no dimple; but after all, it is only prettiness that
requires a dimple: full-blown beauty wants no such adventitious aid.

But her eyes! Miss Waddington's eyes! The eyes are the