His thick, white brows met over his keen, black eyes.

He kept time with his head, jerking it impatiently now and then, when some one lagged or sped ahead in the musical race.
Three of the Hautville sons were men grown.

One, Louis, laid his dark, smooth cheek caressingly against the violin which he played.
Eugene sang the sonorous tenor, and Abner the bass, like an organ.
The youngest son, Richard, small and slender as a girl, so like Madelon that he might have been taken for her had he been dressed in feminine gear, lifted his eager face at her side and raised his piercing, sweet treble, which seemed to pass beyond hearing into fancy.

Madelon, her brown throat swelling above her lace tucker, like a bird's, stood in the midst of the men, and sang and sang, and her wonderful soprano flowed through the harmony like a river of honey; and yet now and then it came with a sudden fierce impetus, as if she would force some enemy to bay with music.

Madelon was slender, but full of curves which were like the soft breast of a bird before an enemy.