She had black hair and blue eyes--of the kind that turns violet in a
novel--and a beautiful white skin, lovely hands and feet, a perfect
figure, and features chiselled and finished and polished and turned out
with such singular felicitousness that one gazed and gazed till the
heart was full of a strange jealous resentment at any one else having
the right to gaze on something so rare, so divinely, so sacredly
fair--any one in the world but one's self!
But a woman can be all this without being Madame Seraskier--she was much
more.
For the warmth and genial kindness of her nature shone through her eyes
and rang in her voice. All was of a piece with her--her simplicity, her
grace, her naturalness and absence of vanity; her courtesy, her
sympathy, her mirthfulness.
I do not know which was the most irresistible: she had a slight Irish
accent when she spoke English, a less slight English accent when she
spoke French!
I made it my business to acquire both.
Indeed, she was in heart and mind and body what we should _all_ be but
for the lack of a little public spirit and self-denial (under proper
guidance) during the last few hundred years on the part of a few
thousand millions of our improvident fellow-creatures.
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