"He is so unlike, so wholly unlike, everything I fancied him to be."
"And what did you fancy him?" said the Marchesa.
The girl sprang up, swept the long hair back from her face and took a pose before the table.
"Like this," she said, "with big, dreamy eyes, a sad mouth, long delicate hands, and lots of lace on his coat."
The naïve, mischievous, jesting air of the girl was adorable; but more adorable was that slender figure, posing for the Marchesa Soder-relli in the dishabille of her toilet with its white stuffs and lace. Her slender, beautiful body was not unlike that of some perfect, immortal youth, transported from sacred groves; some exquisite Adonis coming from a classic myth; except for certain delicate contours that marked a woman emerging from these slender outlines. Even to the Marchesa, seated with her chin in her hands, there was, over the beautiful body of the girl, a charm that thrilled her; the charm of something soft and white and warm and caressing.
"But he isn't the least like this, Marchesa," she ran on. "Don't you remember what everybody said of him at Biarritz—a sort of Prince Charlie? And here he is, so big, and brown, and strong that I simply cannot fix a single fancy to him."
Her eyes danced and her voice laughed.
"He hasn't a sad mouth at all. He has a big, firm mouth, and there isn't the wisp of a shadow in his eyes. They are steady, like this—and level, like this—and he looks at you—so."
She narrowed her eyelids, lifted her chin, and reproduced that profound, detached expression with which the Duke of Dorset had continued to regard her on this afternoon.
"Why, I have been simply fluttering all day. He has stalked through all my little illusions of him and swept them away like cobwebs. There isn't a delicate, pale, 'bonnie Charlie' thing about him. He is a big, hard, ivory creature, colored with walnut stain. He looks like he could break horseshoes and things. He drove that little boat through the sea with a mere shrug of his elbows. If Prince Charlie had been like that the capitol of England would be now in Edinburgh. I wish you could have seen him out there in the hay."