Everybody supposed that these rejections were founded on secret reasons, always ill interpreted.

One said she was deformed; another suggested some hidden fault; but the poor girl was really as pure as a saint, as healthy as an infant, and full of loving kindness; Nature had intended her for all the pleasures, all the joys, and all the fatigues of motherhood.
Mademoiselle Cormon did not possess in her person an obliging auxiliary to her desires.

She had no other beauty than that very improperly called la beaute du diable, which consists of a buxom freshness of youth that the devil, theologically speaking, could never have,--though perhaps the expression may be explained by the constant desire that must surely possess him to cool and refresh himself.

The feet of the heiress were broad and flat.

Her leg, which she often exposed to sight by her manner (be it said without malice) of lifting her gown when it rained, could never have been taken for the leg of a woman.