She had a
sweet, almost childlike face, beautiful, silky, chestnut hair, with
golden lights in it, dark, sweeping lashes veiling her large, soft eyes,
a little rosebud of a mouth, and an air of modesty and purity that was
evidently natural to her--not assumed. A gray silk gown, simply made,
showed to advantage her slender, graceful form, which seemed far too
fragile to endure the hardships inseparable from the wandering life she
was leading. A high Elizabethan ruff made a most becoming frame for her
sweet, delicately tinted, young face, and her only ornament was a string
of pearl beads, clasped round her slender, white neck. Though her beauty
was less striking at first sight than Serafina's, it was of a higher
order: not dazzling like hers, but surpassingly lovely in its exquisite
purity and freshness, and promising to eclipse the other's more
showy charms, when the half-opened bud should have expanded into the
full-blown flower.
The soubrette was like a beautiful Gipsy, with a clear, dark complexion,
rich, mantling colour in her velvety cheeks, intensely black hair--long,
thick, and wavy--great, flashing, brown eyes, and rather a large mouth,
with ripe, red lips, and dazzling white teeth--one's very beau-ideal of
a bewitching, intriguing waiting-maid, and one that might be a dangerous
rival to any but a surpassingly lovely and fascinating mistress.
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