Please observe, however, that there was nothing odd or eccentric about Laurence.

What she was and what she did was masked, as it were, by a feminine and even fragile appearance.

Her heart was full of extreme sensibility, though her head contained a stoical firmness and the virile gift of resolution.

Her clear-seeing eyes knew not how to weep; but no one would have imagined that the delicate white wrist with its tracery of blue veins could defy that of the boldest horseman.

Her hand, so noble, so flexible, could handle gun or pistol with the ease of a practised marksman.