"This is Mademoiselle Dyckfelt, and this is Madame de Marsac, Anne, whom I told you was coming to-day."
She had a timid way of speaking, as if she was shy, and, to Basilea, something of the formal in her manner, as if she was preoccupied.
The Dutch lady was like most of her countrywomen whom Basilea had observed, very fair and pretty, with that glow and robust brightness that gave the women of Holland their reputation for handsomeness. She was plainly dressed in grey branched with silver, and was engaged in working a chair-cover in cross stitch. The vivid green and blue of the wools she used showed off her small, plump white hands—a common beauty among her nation.
The Princess began talking of England and the people she remembered there; while Basilea answered she observed Mary, who seemed to her disappointingly strange and indifferent.
Still little more than a girl, she was extremely beautiful, uniting her father's aristocratic grace and her mother's soft charm; though dignified and above the common height, she bore herself humbly and with a deprecating sweetness.
Basilea was not the only one who at first sight had been impressed with the air of simple purity which heightened and glorified Mary's beauty, for it was impossible to find a fault in her person or manner: she was unconscious of herself, tactful, without affectations or vanities, watchful for others, and charming in address, though with that pretty reserve that Basilea called formality.
Her features were not unlike those of her ancestress—another Mary Stewart, Queen of Scotland—soft and lovely, childlike in profile, with the gentle curve of contour; but grave and rather sad in the full look, and with the expression of a woman, and a woman who has observed, grieved, and pitied.
Her brown eyes were very large, misty, and continually narrowed from weak sight, her hair, of the Stewart red-brown, hung in thick natural curls from a simple knot in her neck.
She gained no advantage from her dress, which would not have offended a Puritan: the straight, boned bodice and stiff falling stuff of a dull pink colour held no line of grace, and the prim ruffles to wrist and throat were more decorous than becoming. At the English court her attire would have been considered ugly, if not ridiculous, and Basilea did not find it pleasing. She was not herself of a type that can afford to forego the advantages of adornment, and she reflected that with the Princess's beauty and her own taste she could have made a sumptuous appearance.
While thus inwardly admired and criticized, Mary was speaking of England and all her one-time friends there, and Mademoiselle Dyckfelt making comments in pretty broken English, accompanied with a little gasping laugh which Basilea had noticed in many Dutch people.