In two words, though she has been married (as I know from what one of the guests told me after dinner) for sixteen years, she would be still an irresistible little woman, but for the one startling drawback of her eyes.

Don't mistake me.

In themselves, they are large, well-opened blue eyes, and may at one time have been the chief attraction in her face.

But now there is an expression of suffering in them--long, unsolaced suffering, as I believe--so despairing and so dreadful, that she really made my heart ache when I looked at her.

I will swear to it, that woman lives in some secret hell of her own making, and longs for the release of death; and is so inveterately full of bodily life and strength, that she may carry her burden with her to the utmost verge of life.