Misericordia_. The stipple of time dots so lightly, so slowly, that
at the age of ten a human countenance should present a mere fleshy
_tabula rasa_, but now and then we are startled by meeting a child as
unlike the round, rosy, pulpy, dimpling, unwritten faces of ordinary
life, as the churubs of Raphael to the rigid forms of Byzantine
mosaics, or the stone portraiture of Copan.

As she sat there, in the golden radiance of the summer noon, she
presented an almost faultless specimen of a type of beauty that is
rarely found nowaday, that has always been peculiar, and bids fair to
become extinct. A complexion of dazzling whiteness and transparency,
rendered more intensely pure by contrast with luxuriant silky hair of
the deepest black,--and large superbly shaped eyes of clear, dark
steel blue, almost violet in hue,--with delicately arched brows and
very long lashes of that purplish black tint which only the trite and
oft-borrowed plumes of ravens adequately illustrate. The forehead was
not remarkable for height, but was peculiarly broad and full with
unusual width between the eyes, and if Strato were correct in his
speculations with reference to Psyche's throne, then verily my little
girl did not cramp her soul in its fleshy palace. Daintily moulded in
figure and face, every feature instinct with a certain delicate
patricianism, that testified to genuine "blue blood," there was
withal a melting tenderness about the parted lips that softened the
regal contour of one who, amid the universal catalogue of feminine
names, could never have been appropriately called other than Regina.

Over in the new chapel across the court, where the sacristan had
opened two of the crimson and green windows that now lighted the gilt
altar as with sacrificial fire, and now drenched it with cool beryl
tints that extinguished the flames, a low murmur became audible,