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 CHAPTER XXXI

BLACK, BUT COMELY

Transplanted, like some delicate flower from her native soil, to this glowing West Indian Island, Mademoiselle de Montmirail had lost but little of the freshness that bloomed in the Norman convent, and had gained a more decided colouring and a deeper expression, which added the one womanly grace hitherto wanting in her beauty. Even the negoes, chattering to one another as they hoed between the cane-rows, grinned out their approval of her beauty, and Hippolyte, a gigantic and hideous Coromantee, imported from Africa, had been good enough to express his opinion that she only wanted a little more colour, as he called it, meaning a shade of yellow in her skin, to be handsome enough for his wife; whereat his audience shouted and showed their white teeth, wagging their woolly heads applauding, while the savage shook his great black shoulders, and looked as if he thought more unlikely events might come to pass.

Had it not been for these very slaves, who gave their opinions so freely on her personal appearance, Cerise would have been tolerably happy. She was, indeed, far from the scenes that were most endeared to her by memory and association. She was very uncertain when or how she should return to France, and until she returned, there was apparently no hope, however remote, that she could realise a certain dream which now constituted the charm of her whole life. Still the dream had been dreamed, vague, romantic, wild, and visionary; yet the girl dwelt upon it day by day, with a tenderness and a constancy the deeper