"That's better," remarked Stella. "I like that. And how does she enchant? Does she keep tame snakes, and play music to them, or mesmerize people, or what?"
The painter laughed again with great enjoyment at her naivete.
"You are quite a cynic, Stella. Where did you learn the trick; from your father, or is it a natural gift? No, she does not keep tame snakes, and I don't know that she has acquired the art of mesmerism; but she can charm for all that. First, she is, really and truly, very beautiful——"
"Tell me what she is like?" interrupted Stella, softly.
The old man paused a moment to light his pipe.
"She is very fair," he said.
"I know," said Stella, dreamily, and with a little smile; "with yellow hair and blue eyes, and a pink and white complexion, and blue veins and a tiny mouth."
"All wrong," he said, with, a laugh. "You have, woman-like, pictured a china doll. Lenore is as unlike a china doll as it is possible to imagine. She has golden hair it is true—but golden hair, not yellow; there is a difference. Then her eyes are not blue; they are violet."
"Violet!"
"Violet!" he repeated, gravely. "I have seen them as violet as the flowers that grow on the bank over there. Her mouth is not small; there was never yet a woman worth a fig who had a small mouth. It is rather large than otherwise, but then it is—a mouth."