"Show me into the drawing room," she said to the former.
Old Cuthbert bowed and walked before her, and threw open a pair of folding doors leading into the grand saloon of the castle. And Claudia entered.
CHAPTER XVI.
FAUSTINA.
And she was beautiful, they said;
I saw that she was more—
One of those women women dread,
Men fatally adore.
—Anon.
It was a saloon of magnificent proportions and splendid decorations. And Claudia was sailing across it with majestic gait, in the full consciousness of being the Viscountess Vincent and Lady of the Castle, when suddenly her eyes fell upon an object that arrested her footsteps, while she gazed in utter amazement.
One of the most transcendently beautiful women that she had ever beheld lay reclining in the most graceful and alluring attitude upon a low divan. Her luxuriant form, arrayed in rich, soft, white moire antique and lace, was thrown into harmonious relief by the crimson velvet cover of the divan. She was asleep, or perhaps affecting to be so. One fine, round, brown arm, with its elbow deep in the downy pillow, rose from its falling sleeve of silk and lace, and with its jeweled hand, buried in masses of glittering, purplish black ringlets, supported a head that Rubens would have loved to paint. Those rich ringlets, flowing down, half veiled the rounded arm and full, curved neck and bosom that were otherwise too bare for delicacy. The features were formed in the most perfect mold of Oriental beauty, the forehead was broad and low; the nose fine and straight; the lips plump and full; and the chin small and rounded. The eyebrows were black, arched, and tapering at the points; the eyelashes were black, long, and drooping over half-closed, almond- shaped, dark eyes that seemed floating in liquid fire. The complexion was of the richest brown, ripening into the most brilliant crimson in the oval cheeks and dewy lips that, falling half open, revealed the little glistening white teeth within. While one jeweled hand supported her beautiful head the other drooped over her reclining form, holding negligently, almost unconsciously, between thumb and finger, an odorous tea-rose.
Claudia herself was a brilliant brunette, but here was another brunette who eclipsed her in her own splendid style of beauty as an astral lamp outshines a candle. Cleopatra, Thais, Aspasia, or any other world-renowned siren who had governed kingdoms through kings' passions, might have been just such a woman as this sleeping Venus.
Doubting really whether she slept or not, Claudia approached and looked over her; and the longer she looked the more she wondered at, admired, and instinctively hated this woman.
Who was she? What was she? How came she there?