present with him for his master's child. I was very near to
"spoiling my beauty" (as my uncle had put it) when I offered the
old man my cheek to kiss, and heard him sigh to himself, as if he
too were not quite hopeful about my future life.

My husband's voice roused me, and turned my mind to happier
thoughts.

"Shall we go, Valeria?" he asked.

I stopped him on our way out to take advantage of my uncle's
advice; in other words, to see how I looked in the glass over the
vestry fireplace.

What does the glass show me?

The glass shows a tall and slender young woman of
three-and-twenty years of age. She is not at all the sort of
person who attracts attention in the street, seeing that she
fails to exhibit the popular yellow hair and the popular painted
cheeks. Her hair is black; dressed, in these later days (as it
was dressed years since to please her father), in broad ripples
drawn back from the forehead, and gathered into a simple knot
behind (like the hair of the Venus de Medicis), so as to show the
neck beneath. Her complexion is pale: except in moments of
violent agitation there is no color to be seen in her face. Her
eyes are of so dark a blue that they are generally mistaken for
black. Her eyebrows are well enough in form, but they are too
dark and too strongly marked. Her nose just inclines toward the
aquiline bend, and is considered a little too large by persons