The sunbeams, filtering through the leafy arch, coquetted with Margaret's raven hair, and alternately brightened and shadowed her features.

There was little of feminine softness in those unguarded features, much of intense and apparently far from agreeable thought.

It was one of her bad days, mentally as well as physically--probably mentally because physically.

She had not slept more than two hours at most, and her eyes and skin showed it.
"However do you stand it, Rita!" said Lucia, as Margaret approached the fountain for the thirty-seventh time.

"It's so dull and tiring, to walk that way." "I've got to keep my figure," replied Margaret, dropping her hands to her slender hips, and lifting her shoulders in a movement that drew down her corsets and showed the fine length of her waist.
"That's nonsense," said Lucia.