My cousin Cora was in her fullest bloom. She was pretty, remarkably pretty, rather than beautiful; and by some women she was quite eclipsed, even when her cheek flushed and her eyes, a deep violet grey, were most lighted up.
She was fully of the middle height, and finely rounded, with exquisite shoulders, arms, and hands. Her features were small, and perhaps not quite regular. Her eyes were alternately timid, inquiring, and full of animation; but, in fact, their expression was ever varying. Her hair was black, thick, and wavy; and while I looked upon her, and thought of her present charms and of past times—and more than all of my uncle's fatherly regard for me—I felt that, though very fond of her, but for another I might have loved her more dearly and tenderly. And now, as if to interrupt, or rather to confirm the tenor of such thoughts as these, she said, as a lady suddenly approached the door of the drawing-room, which we were about to enter—
"Here is one, a friend, to whom I must introduce you."
"No introduction is necessary," said the other, presenting her hand. "I have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Norcliff before."
"Lady Louisa!" I exclaimed, in a breathless voice, and a heart that trembled with sudden emotion, as I touched her hand.
"I am so glad you have come before we leave. I shall have so much to ask you about our mutual friends—who are engaged, and who have quarrelled; who have come home, and who gone abroad. We have been no less than four months in Scotland. Meantime," she added, glancing at her tiny watch, "we must dress for dinner. Come, Cora; we have barely half an hour, and old General Rammerscales is so impatient—he studies 'military time,' and with a 'military appetite.'"
And with a bow and smile of great brightness and sweetness she passed on, taking with her Cora, who playfully kissed her hand to me as they glided up the great staircase into which the long corridor opened.
Lady Louisa was taller and larger in person than Cora. Her features were singularly beautiful, and clearly cut; her forehead was low; and her nose had the gentlest approach to the aquiline. She was without colour, her complexion being pale, perhaps creamy; while in strange contrast to this aristocratic pallor of delicacy, her thick, wavy hair, her long double eyelashes, and her ever-sparkling eyes, were black as those of a Spanish gitano or a Welsh gipsy.
To this pale loveliness was added a bearing alternately haughty and playful, but at all times completely self-possessed; an exquisite taste in dress and jewellery; a very alluring voice; a power of investing even trifles with interest, and of conversing fluently and gracefully on any subject—whether she was mistress of it or not mattered little to Lady Louisa.
She was about my own age, perhaps a few months younger; but in experience of the fashionable world, and in knowledge of the manners and ideas of the upper ten thousand, she was a hundred years my senior.