about the aspect of the man that prepossessed you in his favour. This
personage, who was no less than Diagoras himself, was reclining lazily
upon a kind of narrow sofa cunningly inlaid with ivory, and studying
new combinations in that scientific game which Palamedes is said to
have invented at the siege of Troy.

His companion was of a very different appearance. She was a girl who
to the eye of a northern stranger might have seemed about eighteen,
though she was probably much younger, of a countenance so remarkable
for intelligence that it was easy to see that her mind had outgrown
her years. Beautiful she certainly was, yet scarcely of that beauty
from which the Greek sculptor would have drawn his models. The
features were not strictly regular, and yet so harmoniously did each
blend with each, that to have amended one would have spoilt the whole.
There was in the fulness and depth of the large but genial eye, with
its sweeping fringe, and straight, slightly chiselled brow, more of
Asia than of Greece. The lips, of the freshest red, were somewhat
full and pouting, and dimples without number lay scattered round
them--lurking places for the loves. Her complexion was clear though
dark, and the purest and most virgin bloom mantled, now paler now
richer, through the soft surface. At the time we speak of she was
leaning against the open door with her arms crossed on her bosom, and
her face turned towards the Byzantine. Her robe, of a deep yellow, so
trying to the fair women of the North, became well the glowing colours
of her beauty--the damask cheek, the purple hair. Like those of the
Ionians, the sleeves of the robe, long and loose, descended to her
hands, which were marvellously small and delicate. Long earrings,
which terminated in a kind of berry, studded with precious stones,
then common only with the women of the East; a broad collar,
or necklace, of the smaragdus or emerald; and large clasps,