mission of Colonel Swallowtail),
looked up from the desk where he was perched, with his crutch beside
him, and smiled at the enthusiasm of the lad.

Those who have only seen Miss Fotheringay in later days, since her
marriage and introduction into London life, have little idea how
beautiful a creature she was at the time when our friend Pen first set
eyes on her: and I warn my reader, as beforehand, that the pencil which
illustrates this work (and can draw an ugly face tolerably well, but is
sadly put out when it tries to delineate a beauty) can give no sort of
notion of her. She was of the tallest of women, and at her then age of
six-and-twenty-for six-and-twenty she was, though she vows she was only
nineteen--in the prime and fulness of her beauty. Her forehead was vast,
and her black hair waved over it with a natural ripple (that beauties
of late days have tried to imitate with the help of the crimping-irons),
and was confined in shining and voluminous braids at the back of a neck
such as you see on the shoulders of the Louvre Venus--that delight of
gods and men. Her eyes, when she lifted them up to gaze on you, and ere
she dropped their purple deep-fringed lids, shone with tenderness and
mystery unfathomable. Love and Genius seemed to look out from them and
then retire coyly, as if ashamed to have been seen at the lattice. Who
could have had such a commanding brow but a woman of high intellect? She
never laughed (indeed her teeth were not good), but a smile of endless
tenderness and sweetness played round her beautiful lips, and in the
dimples of her cheeks and her lovely chin. Her nose defied description
in those days. Her ears were like two little pearl shells, which the
earrings she wore (though the handsomest properties in the theatre)
only insulted. She was dressed in long flowing robes of black, which she
managed and swept to and fro with wonderful grace, and out of the folds
of which you only saw her sandals occasionally; they were of rather
a large size; but Pen thought them as ravishing as the slippers of
Cinderella. But it was her hand and arm that this magnificent creature
most excelled in, and somehow you could never see her but through them.
They surrounded her. When she folded them over her bosom in resignation;
when she dropped them in mute agony, or raised them in superb command;
when in sportive gaiety her hands fluttered and waved before her, like
what shall we say?--like the snowy doves before the c