V


Alexina had washed the powder from her own fresh face and put on a morning
frock of green and brown gingham, made not by her mother's dressmaker but
by her sister's. Her soft dusky hair, regardless of the fashion of the
moment, was brushed back from her forehead and coiled at the base of her
beautiful little head. Her long widely set gray eyes, their large irises
very dark and noticeably brilliant even for youth, had the favor of black
lashes as fine and lusterless as her hair, and very narrow black polished
eyebrows. Her skin was a pale olive lightly touched with color, although
the rather large mouth with its definitely curved lips was scarlet. Her
long throat like the rest of her body was white.

All the other children had been clean-cut Ballingers or Groomes,
consistently dark or fair; but it would seem that Nature, taken by surprise
when the little Alexina came along several years after her mother was
supposed to have discharged her debt, had mixed the colors hurriedly and
quite forgotten her usual nice proportions.

The face, under the soft lines of youth, was less oval than it looked, for
the chin was square and the jaw bone accentuated. The short straight thin
nose reclaimed the face and head from too classic a regularity, and the
thin nostrils drew in when she was determined and shook quite alarmingly
when she was angry.

These more significant indications of her still embryonic personality were
concealed by the lovely curves and tints of her years, the brilliant happy