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 and eyebrows, very fine grey eyes, a short straight nose, a warm pale colour, and vivid red lips. A little later the Irish-American, Miss Louise Imogen Guiney, dedicated her “Roadside Harp” to the Sigerson sisters:

There in the Druid brake, If the cuckoo be awake Again, oh, take my rhyme, And keep it long for the sake Of a bygone primrose-time. You of the star-bright head That twilight thoughts sequester: You to your native fountains led, Like to a young Muse garlanded: Dora, and Hester.

Dora was indeed “like to a young Muse garlanded.” She was singularly beautiful, with some strange hint of storm in her young beauty. She was so full of artistic impulse and achievement of many kinds, and she arrived at so much of art without any apprenticeship that the word “genius” seems not inapplicable to her. Our friendship flowed straight on from that summer Sunday of 1887. Dr. Sigerson's house in Clare Street became my headquarters when I went into Dublin from my country home. Dora was always painting or writing or doing sculpture. I can remember her coming from somewhere downstairs to the drawing-room at [viii]