low hair and
the popular painted cheeks. Her hair is black; dressed, in these later
days (as it was dressed years since to please her father), in broad
ripples drawn back from the forehead, and gathered into a simple knot
behind (like the hair of the Venus de Medicis), so as to show the neck
beneath. Her complexion is pale: except in moments of violent agitation
there is no color to be seen in her face. Her eyes are of so dark a blue
that they are generally mistaken for black. Her eyebrows are well enough
in form, but they are too dark and too strongly marked. Her nose just
inclines toward the aquiline bend, and is considered a little too large
by persons difficult to please in the matter of noses. The mouth, her
best feature, is very delicately shaped, and is capable of presenting
great varieties of expression. As to the face in general, it is too
narrow and too long at the lower part, too broad and too low in the
higher regions of the eyes and the head. The whole picture, as reflected
in the glass, represents a woman of some elegance, rather too pale, and
rather too sedate and serious in her moments of silence and repose--in
short, a person who fails to strike the ordinary observer at first
sight, but who gains in general estimation on a second, and sometimes
on a third view. As for her dress, it studiously conceals, instead of
proclaiming, that she has been married that morning. She wears a gray
cashmere tunic trimmed with gray silk, and having a skirt of the
same material and color beneath it. On her head is a bonnet to match,
relieved by a quilling of white muslin with one deep red rose, as a
morsel of positive color, to complete the effect of the whole dress.

Have I succeeded or failed in describing the picture of myself which I
see in the glass? It is not for me to say. I have done my best to keep
clear of the two vanities--the vanity of depreciating and the vanity of
praising my own personal appearance. For the rest, well written or badly
written, thank Heaven it is done!

And whom do I see in the glass standing by my side?

I see a man who is not quite so tall as I am, and who has the misfortune
of looking older than his years. His forehead is prematurely bald.
His big chestnut-colored beard and his long overhanging mustache are
prematurely streaked with gray. He has the color in the face which my
face wants, and the firmness in his figure which my figure wants. He
looks at me with the tenderest and gentlest