Page:Maud Howe - A Newport Aquarelle.djvu/25

 if not intellectual, intelligent in shape. Her fine black hair was brushed simply back from her temples,—she could afford to show her brow. Her eyes were dark and full of fire; the thick line of the eyebrows not classic, but effective. The straight, sensitive nose, with its red nostrils, showed what her friends called her "high spirit;" her maid vulgarly referred to it as a mark of her "ugly temper." Her mouth was full and red, curved and dainty,—a beauty rarely found among the women of her race. Her tiny roseleaf ears had never been desecrated by the needle of the jeweller, and the faultless teeth showed no trace of a dentist's care. A singularly striking-looking woman, whose age might be anywhere from eighteen to twenty-eight, and was exactly a quarter of a century.

When Larkington looked at the smooth fleckless skin, he thought that she could not have passed her teens. Her assured and self-reliant bearing contradicted this supposition, and betokened much experience of the world.