She was so tall that her eyes seemed almost on a level with mine, but she moved with the alert lightness and grace of a small person. Her thick, heavy hair was of a dark coppery brown, her complexion clear and pale, her eyebrows and eyelashes black, her eyes a light bluish gray. Her nose was short and sharp, and rather tilted at the tip, and her red mouth large and very mobile; and here, deviating from my preconceived ideal, she showed me how tame a preconceived ideal can be. Her perfect head was small, and round her long, thick throat two slight creases went parallel, to make what French sculptors call le collier de Vénus; the skin of her neck was like a white camellia, and slender and square-shouldered as she was, she did not show a bone. She was that beautiful type the French define as la fausse maigre, which does not mean a "false, thin woman."
She seemed both thoughtful and mirthful at once, and genial as I had never seen any one genial before—a person to confide in, to tell all one's troubles to, without even an introduction! When she laughed she showed both top and bottom teeth, which were perfect, and her eyes nearly closed, so that they could no longer be seen for the thick lashes that fringed both upper and under eyelids; at which time the expression of her face was so keenly, cruelly sweet that it went through one like a knife. And then the laugh would suddenly cease, her full lips would meet, and her eyes beam out again like two mild gray suns, benevolently humorous and kindly inquisitive, and full of interest in everything and everybody around her. But there—I cannot describe her any more than one can describe a beautiful tune.
Out of those magnificent orbs kindness, kindness, kindness was shed like a balm; and after a while, by chance, that balm was shed for a few moments on me, to my sweet but terrible confusion. Then I saw that she asked my hostess who I was, and received the answer; on which she shed her balm on me for one moment more, and dismissed me from her thoughts.
Madame Grisi sang again—Desdemona's song from Othello—and the beautiful lady thanked the divine singer, whom she seemed to know quite intimately; and I thought her thanks—Italian thanks—even diviner than the song—not that I could quite understand them or even hear them well—I was too far; but she thanked with eyes and hands and shoulders— slight, happy movements—as well as words; surely the sweetest and sincerest words ever spoken.
She was much surrounded and made up to—evidently a person of great importance; and I ventured to ask another shy man standing in my corner who she was, and he answered—
"The Duchess of Towers."
She did not stay long, and when she departed all turned dull and commonplace that had seemed so bright before she came; and seeing that it was not necessary to bid my hostess good-night and thank her for a pleasant evening, as we did in Pentonville, I got myself out of the house and walked back to my lodgings an altered man.
I should probably never meet that lovely young duchess again, and certainly never know her; but her shaft had gone straight and true into my very heart, and I felt how well barbed it was, beyond all possibility of its ever being torn out of that blessed wound; might this never heal; might it bleed on forever!
She would be an ideal in my lonely life, to live up to in thought and word and deed. An instinct which I felt to be infallible told me she was as good as she was fair—
"Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love."