If you had seen Mrs.Costello and her daughter sitting upon the verandah, as they were tolerably sure to be found every day while summer lasted, you would have owned that it would be hard to find a prettier picture set in a prettier frame.
This evening they were there alone.

Mrs.Costello had her work-table placed at the end nearest the river, and her rocking-chair beside it.
Some knitting was in her hands, but she could not knit, for her ball of wool was being idly wound and unwound round her daughter's fingers.
Sitting on a footstool, leaning back against her mother's knee, was this daughter--a child loved (it could almost be seen at a glance) with an absorbing, passionate love.

A girl of seventeen, just between child and woman, who seemed to have been a baby but yesterday, and who still, in the midst of her new womanly grace, kept her caressing baby ways.
Something unusual, not only in degree but in kind, belonged to her brilliant beauty, and set it off.

The marvellous blackness of hair and eyes was so soft in its depth, the tint of her skin so transparent in its duskiness, her slight figure so flexible, so exquisite in its outlines, that it was impossible not to wonder what the type was which produced so perfect an example.

Spanish it was said to be, but the child was Canadian by birth, and her mother English; it was clear that whatever race had bestowed Lucia's dower of beauty, it had come to her through her father.
Mother and daughter often sat as now, silent and idle both; Lucia dreaming after her girlish fashion, and Mrs.Costello content to wait and let her life be absorbed in her child's.