"No! that color does not suit you. Come into this one!"
And he drew her under a ray of greenish light:—
"Heavens! you look like a dead person! No, no; that's just as bad! Here, try the yellow color; that goes well, but it makes you ruddy, and brunettes ought to stay brunettes,—I mean dark-haired people,—for of course we know that your complexion is light; come, try the blue. Oh, superb! wonderful! How beautiful you are, child!"
The young marquis was right. Blue, which is the most spiritual, the purest, and the sublimest of colors, was admirably adapted for Marta's bright face. The sun-ray fell on it like a caress from heaven, bathing it sweetly in a diaphanous light. Her long black hair assumed a purplish tint, while the adorable oval of her face and her firm, mellow neck were softly tinged with a heavenly blue. The delicate line of her regular features acquired an ideal perfection, and her whole countenance was transfigured with an angelic expression of beatitude.
Nevertheless, there was a certain exaggeration not in good taste in that rapturous, celestial expression given by the blue light. It was not the true Marta, ingenuous and modest in her looks as in her features, but a different Marta, affected, theatrical, and fantastic. Ricardo finally declared that no light was so becoming to her as the natural.
"And Menino!"
"It's true; we had forgotten him. But where shall we go now? we have looked everywhere."
"Let us go to Maria's room; perhaps it has flown up there."
"It does not seem to me likely; however, let's go there."