CHAPTER II "HAIR LIKE RIPE CORN"
The duke was reciting his adventure with the valet to his three guests, but he glanced most often at Lady Constance Camborne.
No, the society journals and society talk hadn't exaggerated her beauty a bit—she was far and away the loveliest girl he had ever seen. He knew it directly she came into the room with Lord Hayle and the bishop, the influence of such extraordinary beauty was felt like a physical blow. The girl was of a Saxon type, but with all the colouring accentuated. The hair which crowned the small, patrician head in shining masses was golden. But it was not pale gold, metallic gold, or flaxen. It was a deep, rich gold, an "old gold," and the duke, with a somewhat unaccustomed flight of fancy, compared it in his mind to ripe corn. Her eyebrows were very dark brown, almost black, and the great eyes, with their long black lashes, were dark as a southern night. Under their great coronet of yellow hair, and set in a face whose contour was a pure and perfect oval, with a skin like the inside of a seashell, the contrast was extraordinarily effective. Her beautiful lips had the rare lines of the unbroken Greek bow, and their colour was like wine. She was tall in figure, even as though some marble goddess had stepped down from her pedestal in the Louvre and assumed the garments of the daughters of men. Some people said that, beautiful as she was in every way, her crowning beauty was her hands. She had sat to Pozzi, at Milan, at the great sculptor's earnest request, so that he might perpetuate the glory of her hands for ever. Mr. Swinburne had written a sonnet, shown only to a favoured few and never published, about her hands.
The duke talked on. Outwardly he was calm enough, within his brain was in a turmoil entirely fresh to it, entirely new and unexpected. He heard his own voice mechanically relating the incident of Proctor's rebellion, but he gave hardly a thought to what he said. For all he knew he might have been talking the most absolute nonsense.
He was lost in wonder that one living, moving human being could be so fair!
He felt a sort of unreasoning anger with his friend, Lord Hayle. Why hadn't Gerald introduced him to his sister before? Why had all this time been wasted?—quite forgetting the repeated invitations he had received to stay with the Cambornes.
"Well, what did you do in the end, John?" said Lord Hayle. "Did you kick the fellow out? I should have pitched him down the staircase, by Jove!"
"As a matter of fact, I did nothing at all," said the duke. "I was too surprised. I just sat still and let him talk; I was quite tongue-tied."
"More's the pity," said the young viscount, a lean, sinewy lad, who rowed three in the 'Varsity boat. "I should have made very short work of him."