Donna Faustina was just eighteen years old, and had only quitted
the convent of the Sacro Cuore a month earlier. It might have been
said that she was too young to be beautiful, for she evidently
belonged to that class of women who do not attain their full
development until a later period. Her figure was almost too
slender, her face almost too delicate and ethereal. There was
about her a girlish look, an atmosphere of half-saintly
maidenhood, which was not so much the expression of her real
nature as the effect produced by her being at once very thin and
very fresh. There was indeed nothing particularly angelic about
her warm brown eyes, shaded by unusually long black lashes; and
little wayward locks of chestnut hair, curling from beneath the
small round hat of the period, just before the small pink ears,
softened as with a breath of worldliness the grave outlines of the
serious face. A keen student of women might have seen that the dim
religious halo of convent life which still clung to the young girl
would soon fade and give way to the brilliancy of the woman of the
world. She was not tall, though of fully average height, and
although the dress of that time was ill-adapted to show to
advantage either the figure or the movements, it was evident, as
she stepped lightly from the carriage, that she had a full share
of ease and grace. She possessed that unconscious certainty in
motion which proceeds naturally from the perfect proportion of all
the parts, and which exercises a far greater influence over men
than a faultless profile or a dazzling skin.

Instead of taking her father's arm, Donna Faustina turned and
looked at the face of the wounded Zouave, whom three men had
carefully taken from the carriage and were preparing to carry
upstairs. Poor Gouache was hardly recognisable for the smart