of a woman.

The lady's companion, being a man, took a more merciful view. "She
can't help being ugly," he whispered. "But see how she looks at the
girl with her. A good old creature, I say, if ever there was one yet."
The lady eyed him, as only a jealous woman can eye her husband, and
whispered back, "Of course you're in love with that slip of a girl!"

She _was_ a slip of a girl--and not even a tall slip. At seventeen
years of age, it was doubtful whether she would ever grow to a better
height.

But a girl who is too thin, and not even so tall as the Venus de'
Medici, may still be possessed of personal attractions. It was not
altogether a matter of certainty, in this case, that the attractions
were sufficiently remarkable to excite general admiration. The fine
colour and the plump healthy cheeks, the broad smile, and the regular
teeth, the well-developed mouth, and the promising bosom which form
altogether the average type of beauty found in the purely bred English
maiden, were not among the noticeable charms of the small creature in
gloomy black, shrinking into a corner of the big room. She had very
little colour of any sort to boast of. Her hair was of so light a brown
that it just escaped being flaxen; but it had the negative merit of not
being forced down to her eyebrows, and twisted into the hideous
curly-wig which exhibits a liberal equality of ugliness on the heads of
women in the present day. There was a delicacy of finish in her
features--in the nose and the lips especially--a sensitive
changefulness in the expression of her eyes (too dark in themselves to
be quite in harmony with her light hair), and a subtle yet simple
witchery in her rare smile, which atoned, in some degree at least, for