Page:The Snake's Pass (Stoker).djvu/112

perfect beauty of the Spanish type—beauty perhaps all the more perfect for being tempered with northern calm. As I said, she was tall and beautifully proportioned. Her neck was long and slender, gracefully set in her rounded shoulders, and supporting a beautiful head borne with the free grace of the lily on its stem. There is nothing in woman more capable of complete beauty than the head, and, crowned as this head was with a rich mass of hair as black and as glossy as the raven's wing, it was a thing to remember. She wore no bonnet, but a grey homespun shawl was thrown loosely over her shoulders; her hair was coiled in one rich mass at the top and back of her head, and fastened with an old-fashioned tortoiseshell comb. Her face was a delicate oval, showing what Rossetti calls "the pure wide curve from ear to chin." Luxuriant black eyebrows were arched over large black-blue eyes swept by curling lashes of extraordinary length, and showed off the beauty of a rounded, ample forehead—somewhat sunburnt, be it said. The nose was straight and wide between the eyes, with delicate sensitive nostrils; the chin wide and firm, and the mouth full and not small, with lips of scarlet, forming a perfect Cupid's bow, and just sufficiently open to show two rows of small teeth, regular and white as pearls. Her dress was that of a well-to-do peasant—a sort of body or jacket of printed chintz over a dress or petticoat of homespun of the shade of crimson given by a madder dye. The dress was short, and showed trim ankles in grey homespun with pretty feet in thick country-made wide-toed