Her features are faultless, despite their irregularity; the forehead is low, the eyebrows straight and delicately pencilled, the eyes large and dark, and, when she opens them wide, of almost supernatural brilliancy. The mouth is small, the under lip a trifle too full, and the chin a little too long.
Those irregularities lend a peculiar charm to the face, reminding one of certain old Spanish family portraits,--dark-eyed beauties with high collars, and with huge pearls in their ears. The facts that Olga neither wears a bang nor curls her hair upon her forehead, but has it parted simply in the middle to lie in thick waves on either side of her head, and that her complexion is of a transparent pallor, contribute still further to her resemblance to those distinguished individuals. She wears a simple white gown, with a Malmaison rose stuck in her belt. Lato's eyes rest upon her with artistic satisfaction. The tender melody of the Miller's Song soothes his sore heart as if by a caress. He softly enters the room, sits down, and listens. Olga, suddenly aware by intuition of his presence, turns her head.
"Ah!--you here?" she exclaims, blushing slightly, and taking her hands from the keys.
"I have made so bold," he replies, smiling. "Have you any objection?"
"No; but you should have announced yourself," she says, with a little frown.
"Ah, indeed!" he rejoins, in the tone in which one teases a child. "Well, the listening to a musical soliloquy is generally considered only a harmless indiscretion."
"Yes; when I am playing something worth listening to I have no objection, but I prefer to keep my halting improvisations to myself."
"Well, then, play something worth listening to," he says, good-humouredly.
She turns again to the instrument, and begins, with great brilliancy of touch, to play a bravura-scherzo, by some Viennese composer at present in fashion.
"For heaven's sake," Treurenberg, whose feeling for music is as delicate as his appreciation of all beauty, interrupts her, "do not go on with that ghastly Witches' Sabbath!"