f, rather than concealed, the rich contours of a form of
mature but admirable symmetry.

Tall, graceful, and elegant, she united easy motion with fine
proportion; thus possessing the lightness of the Sylph and the luxuriant
fullness of the Hebe.

Her countenance was alike expressive of intellectuality and strong
passions. Her large black eyes were full of fire, and their glances
seemed to penetrate the soul. Her nose, of the finest aquiline
development,--her lips, narrow, but red and pouting, with the upper one
short and slightly projecting over the lower,--and her small, delicately
rounded chin, indicated both decision and sensuality: but the insolent
gaze of the libertine would have quailed beneath the look of sovereign
hauteur which flashed from those brilliant eagle eyes.

In a word, she appeared to be a woman well adapted to command the
admiration--receive the homage--excite the passions--and yet repel the
insolence of the opposite sex.

But those appearances were to some degree deceitful; for never was
homage offered to her--never was she courted nor flattered.

Ten years previously to the time of which we are writing--and when she
was only fifteen--the death of her mother, under strange and mysterious
circumstances, as it was generally reported, made such a terrible
impression on her mind, that she hovered for months on the verge of
dissolution; and when the physician who attended upon her communicated
to her father the fact that her life was at length beyond danger, that
assurance was followed by the sad and startling declaration, that she
had forever lost the sense of hearing and the power of speech.

No wonder, then, that homage was never paid nor adulation offered to
Nisida--the deaf and dumb daughter of the proud Count of Riverola!

Those who were intimate with this family ere the occurrence of that sad
event--especially the physician, Dr. Duras, who had attended upon the
mother in her last moments, and on the daughter during her
illness--declared that, up to the period when the malady assailed her,
Nisida was a sweet, amiable and retiring girl; but she had evidently
been fearfully changed by the terrible affliction which that malady had
left behind. For if she could no longer express herself in words, her
eyes darted lightnings upon the unhappy menials who had the misfortune
to incur her displeasure; and her lips would quiver with the violence of
concentrated passion, at the most trifling neglect or