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Dona Perfecta by Benito Pérez Galdós
page 277 of 295 (93%)



CHAPTER XXXI

DONA PERFECTA

See with what tranquillity Senora Dona Perfecta pursues her occupation
of writing. Enter her room, and, notwithstanding the lateness of the
hour, you will surprise her busily engaged, her mind divided between
meditation and the writing of several long and carefully worded epistles
traced with a firm hand, every hair-stroke of every letter in which is
correctly formed. The light of the lamp falls full upon her face and
bust and hands, its shade leaving the rest of her person and almost the
whole of the room in a soft shadow. She seems like a luminous figure
evoked by the imagination from amid the vague shadows of fear.

It is strange that we should not have made before this a very important
statement, which is that Dona Perfecta was handsome, or rather that she
was still handsome, her face preserving the remains of former beauty.
The life of the country, her total lack of vanity, her disregard for
dress and personal adornment, her hatred of fashion, her contempt for
the vanities of the capital, were all causes why her native beauty
did not shine or shone very little. The intense shallowness of her
complexion, indicating a very bilious constitution, still further
impaired her beauty.

Her eyes black and well-opened, her nose finely and delicately shaped,
her forehead broad and smooth, she was considered by all who saw her as
a finished type of the human figure; but there rested on those
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