Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/267

  confess to a sense of shock when he presented me to madame.

"She might easily have passed for pure French. I fancy that I was the only person aboard who could see the outcrop of African—or, to be polite, Haytian. She was charming in manner and appearance, inclined to be fair, with blue eyes and that dusky blonde hair which will defy any pedigree. Her face was pretty, rather piquant, and her figure svelte and full of grace. Altogether she was most attractive and not lacking in a certain chic, but there was a furtive expression about her eyes like that which I have noticed in the eyes of a trained lioness.

"I talked with the Fouchères many times during the voyage, and learned that since their marriage they had lived in Paris and were returning to Hayti for the first time. Madame, it appeared, although Haytian by birth, had been sent to a convent school in France when a mere child and had not visited her native country since then. [ 251 ]