Without being sad or melancholy, she seemed to have little natural enjoyment.

Reflectiveness, order, a sense of duty, the three chief expressions of Flemish nature, were the characteristics of a face that seemed cold at first sight, but to which the eye was recalled by a certain grace of outline and a placid pride which seemed the pledges of domestic happiness.

By one of those freaks which physiologists have not yet explained, she bore no likeness to either father or mother, but was the living image of her maternal great-grandmother, a Conyncks of Bruges, whose portrait, religiously preserved, bore witness to the resemblance.
The supper gave some life to the ball.

If the military disasters forbade the delights of dancing, every one felt that they need not exclude the pleasures of the table.

The true patriots, however, retired early; only the more indifferent remained, together with a few card players and the intimate friends of the family.