Her forehead was vast, and her black hair waved over it with a natural ripple (that beauties of late days have tried to imitate with the help of the crimping-irons), and was confined in shining and voluminous braids at the back of a neck such as you see on the shoulders of the Louvre Venus--that delight of gods and men.

Her eyes, when she lifted them up to gaze on you, and ere she dropped their purple deep-fringed lids, shone with tenderness and mystery unfathomable.

Love and Genius seemed to look out from them and then retire coyly, as if ashamed to have been seen at the lattice.

Who could have had such a commanding brow but a woman of high intellect?
She never laughed (indeed her teeth were not good), but a smile of endless tenderness and sweetness played round her beautiful lips, and in the dimples of her cheeks and her lovely chin.

Her nose defied description in those days.