From beneath a head-dress built of white curls and costly lace, half enclosing her high narrow forehead, a pale, thin, straight bridge of nose descended prominently over her sunken cheeks to thin locked lips.

Her aspect suggested the repose of a winter landscape, enjoyable in pictures, or on skates, otherwise nipping....

Mental directness, of no greater breadth than her principal feature, was the character it expressed; and candour of spirit shone through the transparency she was, if that mild taper could be said to shine in proof of a vitality rarely notified to the outer world by the opening of her mouth; chiefly then, though not malevolently to command: as the portal of some snow-bound monastery opens to the outcast, bidding it be known that the light across the wolds was not deceptive and a glimmer of light subsists among the silent within.

The life sufficed to her.

She was like a marble effigy seated upright, requiring but to be laid at her length for transport to the cover of the tomb.
Now Captain Con was by nature ruddy as an Indian summer flushed in all its leaves.