men. Her eyes, when she lifted them up to gaze on you, and ere she
dropped their purple deep-fringed lids, shone with tenderness and mystery
unfathomable. Love and Genius seemed to look out from them and then
retire coyly, as if ashamed to have been seen at the lattice. Who could
have had such a commanding brow but a woman of high intellect? She never
laughed (indeed her teeth were not good), but a smile of endless
tenderness and sweetness played round her beautiful lips, and in the
dimples of her cheeks and her lovely chin. Her nose defied description in
those days. Her ears were like two little pearl shells, which the
earrings she wore (though the handsomest properties in the theatre) only
insulted. She was dressed in long flowing robes of black, which she
managed and swept to and fro with wonderful grace, and out of the folds
of which you only saw her sandals occasionally; they were of rather a
large size; but Pen thought them as ravishing as the slippers of
Cinderella. But it was her hand and arm that this magnificent creature
most excelled in, and somehow you could never see her but through them.
They surrounded her. When she folded them over her bosom in resignation;
when she dropped them in mute agony, or raised them in superb command;
when in sportive gaiety her hands fluttered and waved before her, like
what shall we say?--like the snowy doves before the chariot of Venus--it
was with these arms and hands that she beckoned, repelled, entreated,
embraced, her admirers--no single one, for she was armed with her own
virtue, and with her father's valour, whose sword would have leapt from
its scabbard at any insult offered to his child--but the whole house;
which rose to her, as the phrase was, as she curtseyed and bowed, and
charmed it.

Thus she stood for a minute--complete and beautiful--as Pen stared at
her. "I say, Pen, isn't she a stunner?" asked Mr. Foker.