ngs and
the almost too easy gestures of her body; for she was much given to
action, and to the expression of her thought by the motion of her
limbs. She might certainly have made her way as an actress, had
fortune called upon her to earn her bread in that fashion. And her
voice would have suited the stage. It was powerful when she called
upon it for power; but, at the same time, flexible and capable of
much pretence at feeling. She could bring it to a whisper that would
almost melt your heart with tenderness,--as she had melted Sir
Florian's, when she sat near to him reading poetry; and then she
could raise it to a pitch of indignant wrath befitting a Lady Macbeth
when her husband ventured to rebuke her. And her ear was quite
correct in modulating these tones. She knew,--and it must have been
by instinct, for her culture in such matters was small,--how to use
her voice so that neither its tenderness nor its wrath should be
misapplied. There were pieces in verse that she could read,--things
not wondrously good in themselves,--so that she would ravish you; and
she would so look at you as she did it that you would hardly dare
either to avert your eyes or to return her gaze. Sir Florian had not
known whether to do the one thing or the other, and had therefore
seized her in his arms. Her face was oval,--somewhat longer than an
oval,--with little in it, perhaps nothing in it, of that brilliancy
of colour which we call complexion. And yet the shades of her
countenance were ever changing between the softest and most
transparent white, and the richest, mellowest shades of brown. It
was only when she simulated anger,--she was almost incapable of real
anger,--that she would succeed in calling the thinnest streak of pink
from her heart, to show that there was blood running in her veins.
Her hair, which was nearly black,--but in truth with more of softness
and of lustre than ever belong to hair that is really black,--she
wore bound tight round her perfect forehead, with one long love-lock
hanging over her shoulder. The form of her head was so good that
she could dare to carry it without a chignon, or any adventitious
adjuncts from an artiste's shop. Very bitter was she in consequence
when speaking of the head-gear of other women. Her chin was perfect
in its round, not over long,--as is the case with so many such faces,
utterly spoiling the symmetry of the countenance. But it lacked a
dimple, and therefore lacked feminine tenderness.