And all this was asked by a glance now and again; by a glance of those long, shy, liquid eyes, which were ever falling on the face of him she questioned, and then ever as quickly falling from it.
Her face, as I have said, was long and thin, but it was the longness and thinness of growing youth.

The natural lines of it were full of beauty, of pale silent beauty, too proud in itself to boast itself much before the world, to make itself common among many.

Her hair was already long and rich, but was light in colour, much lighter than it grew to be when some four or five more years had passed over her head.

At the time of which I speak she wore it in simple braids brushed back from her forehead, not having as yet learned that majestic mode of sweeping it from her face which has in subsequent years so generally prevailed.
And what then of her virtues and her faults--of her merits and defects?
Will it not be better to leave them all to time and the coming pages?
That she was proud of her birth, proud of being an Irish Desmond, proud even of her poverty, so much I may say of her, even at that early age.

In that she was careless of the world's esteem, fond to a fault of romance, poetic in her temperament, and tender in her heart, she shared the ordinary--shall I say foibles or virtues ?--of so many of her sex.