“Good madam, let me see your face,” pleaded Viola, for she longed to behold the lady who could so enchant Duke Orsino.
“Have you any commission from your lord to see my face?” asked Olivia, not ill-pleased. “You are now out of your message; but we will draw the curtain, and show you the picture. Look you, sir, such a one I am now. Is it not well done?”
She threw back her veil, and her dazzling beauty shone forth in all its radiance.
Viola gazed at her in admiration.
“Excellently done, if God did all,” she murmured, for she could scarcely believe such loveliness of tint could be natural.
“’Tis in grain, sir; it will endure wind and weather,” replied Olivia.
“It is beauty truly blent, whose red and white were laid on by Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand,” said Viola. “Lady, you are the cruellest person alive if you let these graces go down to the grave and leave the world no copy.”
“Oh, sir, I will not be so hard-hearted,” said Olivia, with gentle sarcasm; “I will give out divers schedules of my beauty; it shall be all entered in an inventory, and duly labelled; as, item, two lips, indifferent red; item, two gray eyes, with lids to them; item, one neck, one chin, and so forth. Were you sent hither to praise me?”
“I see you what you are—you are too proud,” said Viola. “My lord and master loves you. Oh, such love deserves its recompense, though you were crowned peerless in beauty.”
To this Olivia replied that Orsino knew her mind; she could not love him. She knew him to be noble, of great estate and stainless youth, generous in disposition, learned, valiant, graceful, and handsome in person. Yet she could not love him. He might have taken his answer long ago.