eyes! now that she looks up and smiles, what
a bewitching smile it is! by what sudden play of rippling dimples the
smile is enlivened and redoubled! Do you notice one feature? In
very showy beauties it is seldom noticed; but I, being in my way a
physiognomist, consider that it is always worth heeding as an index of
character. It is the ear. Remark how delicately it is formed in
her: none of that heaviness of lobe which is a sure sign of sluggish
intellect and coarse perception. Hers is the artist's ear. Note
next those hands: how beautifully shaped! small, but not doll-like
hands,--ready and nimble, firm and nervous hands, that could work for a
helpmate. By no means very white, still less red, but somewhat embrowned
as by the sun, such as you may see in girls reared in southern climes,
and in her perhaps betokening an impulsive character which had not
accustomed itself, when at sport in the open air, to the thraldom of
gloves,--very impulsive people even in cold climates seldom do.

In conveying to us by a few bold strokes an idea of the sensitive,
quick-moved, warm-blooded Henry II., the most impulsive of the
Plantagenets, his contemporary chronicler tells us that rather than
imprison those active hands of his, even in hawking-gloves, he would
suffer his falcon to fix its sharp claws into his wrist. No doubt
there is a difference as to what is befitting between a burly bellicose
creature like Henry II. and a delicate young lady like Isaura Cicogna;
and one would not wish to see those dainty wrists of hers seamed and
scarred by a falcon's claws. But a girl may not be less exquisitely
feminine for slight heed of artificial prettiness. Isaura had no need
of pale bloodless hands to seem one of Nature's highest grade of
gentlewomen even to the most fastidious eyes. About her there was
a charm apart from her mere beauty, and often disturbed instead of
heightened by her mere intellect: it consisted in a combination of
exquisite artistic refinement, and of a generosity of character by which
refinement was animated into vigour and warmth.

The room, which was devoted exclusively to Isaura, had in it much that
spoke of the occupant. That room, when first taken furnished, had a good
deal of the comfortless showiness which belongs to ordinary furnished
apartments in France, especially in the Parisian suburbs, chiefly let
for the summer: thin limp muslin curtains that decline to draw; stiff
mahogany chairs covered with yellow Utre