f her tone.

CHAPTER XI - A COUNTRY DRIVE.

Like all Martialists, I had been accustomed since my landing to wake
with the first light of dawn; but the draught, though its earlier
effects were anything but narcotic or stupifying, deepened and
prolonged my sleep. It was not till the rays of sunlight came clear
and full through the crystal roof of the peristyle, and the window of
our bridal chamber, that my eyes unclosed. The first object on which
they opened startled me into full waking recollection. Exactly where
the sunbeams fell, just within reach of my hand, Eveena stood; the
loveliest creature I ever beheld, a miniature type of faultless
feminine grace and beauty. By the standard of Terrestrial humanity she
was tiny rather than small: so light, so perfect in proportion, form,
and features, so absolutely beautiful, so exquisitely delicate, as to
suggest the ideal Fairy Queen realised in flesh and blood, rather than
any properly human loveliness. In the transparent delicacy of a
complexion resembling that of an infant child of the fairest and most
tenderly nurtured among the finest races of Europe, in the ideally
perfect outline of face and features--the noble but even forehead--the
smooth, straight, clearly pencilled eyebrows--the large almond-shaped
eyes and drooping lids, with their long, dark, soft fringe--the little
mouth and small, white, even regular teeth--the rosy lips, slightly
compressed, save when parted in speech, smile, or eager attention--she
exhibited in their most perfect but by no means fullest development
the characteristics of Martial physiognomy; or rather the
characteristic beauty of a family in which the finest traits of that
physiognomy are unmixed with any of its meaner or harsher
peculiarities. The hands, long, slight, and soft, the unsandalled
feet, not less perfectly shaped, could only have belonged to the child
of ancestors who for more than a hundred generations have never known
hard manual toil, rough exposure, or deforming, cramping costume; even
as every detail of her beauty bore witness to an immemorial
inheritance of health unbroken by physical infirmity, undisturbed by
violent passions, and developed by an admirable system of physical and
mental discipline and culture. The absence of veil and sleeves left
visible the soft rounded arms and shoulders, in whose complexion a
tinge of pale rose seemed to shine through a skin itself of
translucent white; the small head, and the perfe