around her shapely shoulders and although both velvet
and silk were old and dingy, and the feathers in her hat wet and limp,
they were still very effective, and she looked like a young queen who
had strayed away from her realm; the freshness and radiant beauty of her
face more than made up for the shabbiness of her dress, and de Sigognac
was fairly dazzled by her many charms.

Isabelle was much more youthful than Serafina, as was requisite for her
role of ingenuous young girl, and far more simply dressed. She had a
sweet, almost childlike face, beautiful, silky, chestnut hair, with
golden lights in it, dark, sweeping lashes veiling her large, soft eyes,
a little rosebud of a mouth, and an air of modesty and purity that was
evidently natural to her--not assumed. A gray silk gown, simply made,
showed to advantage her slender, graceful form, which seemed far too
fragile to endure the hardships inseparable from the wandering life she
was leading. A high Elizabethan ruff made a most becoming frame for her
sweet, delicately tinted, young face, and her only ornament was a string
of pearl beads, clasped round her slender, white neck. Though her beauty
was less striking at first sight than Serafina's, it was of a higher
order: not dazzling like hers, but surpassingly lovely in its exquisite
purity and freshness, and promising to eclipse the other's more
showy charms, when the half-opened bud should have expanded into the
full-blown flower.

The soubrette was like a beautiful Gipsy, with a clear, dark complexion,
rich, mantling colour in her velvety cheeks, intensely black hair--long,
thick, and wavy--great, flashing, brown eyes, and rather a large mouth,
with ripe, red lips, and dazzling white teeth--one's very beau-ideal of
a bewitching, intriguing waiting-maid, and one that might be a dangerous
rival to any but a surpassingly lovely and fascinating mistress. She was
one of the beauties that women are not apt to admire, but men rave about
and run after the world over. She wore a fantastic costume of blue and
yellow, which was odd, piquant, and becoming, and seemed fully conscious
of her own charms.

Mme. Leonarde, the "noble mother" of the troupe dressed all in black,
like a Spanish duenna, was portly of figure, with a heavy, very pale
face, double chin, and intensely black eyes, that had a crafty, slightly
malicious expression. She had been upon the stage from her early
childhood, passing through all the different phases, a