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CHAPTER II.


At the inn.


If this woman happened to have been reproachlessly beautiful then I might venture the remark "Gentleman reader, she is as much beautiful as your sweetheart, and, fair reader, she is just your shadow reflected in your looking glass." This would have been pen-pourtraying to its finish. Unfortunately she was not a faultless beauty. So I have to resist the temptation. The reason in saying that she was not a perfect beauty is, first, she was a trifle taller than the average medium figure,—secondly, her upper and lower lips slightly curled up inwards, and, thirdly, she had not a complexion of cream-and-rose. Though comparatively of a taller height, her body was full of a buxom bosom and her limbs showed perfect fulness and rotundity. As in the rains the cringing creeper sways majestically with its green gorgeous foliage, so her form displayed all the infinite graces on account of the lusty fulness of life. As a matter of course, her figure, though, to some degree, a shade taller in size, looked all the more resplendent because of its full-blooded roundness. Amongst the class of beauties of the really milk-and-rose style, some wears the hue of the liquid silver of