Strange product of Burgundian and Montenegrin blood, conceived and born amid the toils of war, the girl was doubtless in many ways the result of her congenital circumstances.

Thin, slender, brown as a tobacco leaf, and short in stature, she nevertheless possessed extraordinary strength,--a strength unseen by the eyes of peasants, to whom the mysteries of the nervous system are unknown.

Nerves are not admitted into the medical rural mind.
At thirteen years of age Genevieve had completed her growth, though she was hardly as tall as an ordinary girl of her age.

Did her face owe its topaz skin, so dark and yet so brilliant, dark in tone and brilliant in the quality of its tissue, giving a look of age to the childish face, to her Montenegrin origin, or to the ardent sun of Burgundy?
Medical science may dismiss the inquiry.

The premature old age on the surface of the face was counterbalanced by the glow, the fire, the wealth of light which made the eyes two stars.