make a double bay. The light fell splashing upon this cleared space,
and he saw what he saw.

This was a tall lady, richly dressed in some gauzy purple stuff,
dragging a dead man by the heels, and making a very bad business of
it. She was dainty to view, her hands and arms shone like white
marble; but apart from all this it was clear to Prosper that she
lacked the mere strength for the office she had proposed herself. The
dead man was not very tall, but he was too tall for the lady. The
roughness of the ground, the resistance of the underwood, the
incapacity of the performers, made the procession unseemly.

Prosper, forgetting Brother Bonaccord, quickened his horse to a
gallop, and was soon up with the toiling lady. She stopped when she
heard him coming, stood up to wait for him, quick-breathing and a
little flushed, and never took her eyes off him.

It was clearly a time for discretion: so much she signalled from her
brown eyes, which were watchful, but by no means timid. He remembered
afterwards that they had been apt to fall easily into set stares, and
thus to give her a bold look which seemed to invite you to be bold
also. But though he could not see this now, and though he had no taste
for women, it was certain she was handsome in a profuse way. She had a
broad full bust; her skin, dazzling white at the neck, ran into golden
russet before it reached the burnt splendour of her cheeks; her mouth,
rather long and curved up at the corners, had lips rich and crimson;
of which, however, the upper was short to a fault, and so curled back
as to give her, a pettish or fretful look. Her dark hair, which was
plentiful and drawn low over her ears into a heavy knot at the nape of
her neck, was dressed within a fine gold net. Her arms were bare to