Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 2).djvu/106

 whether it would suffice for him. She looked for some eggs from her fowls, and she was pleased that she could find three.

Then she took up the silver-framed mirror of burnished steel that had been buried there with some regal or noble woman, and that now served her to give her back a dim reflection of her own face, and she combed and brushed her short rich hair till it shone like dusky gold that the fires have burnished and reddened. For the first time in her life she looked at the great eyes that surveyed her from the mirror, and said to herself, 'Is it true that I am good to look at? Joconda said so once or twice, but then she loved me.'

She had never heard of Boccaccio, but a drop of the old potent Florentine philtres that Boccaccio used had touched her lips.

She was leaning on the sward outside her home, and gazing into the steel mirror which was lying upon the grass.

For the first time she looked with interest on the face that the Etruscan mirror reflected, and wondered if indeed it were handsome.

She did not know that her head was like that of Carlo's angel, and her body like one