As the maiden stood this evening in the sunlight, her radiant yellow hair complementing the blue of her sea-deep eyes, her fair cheeks aglow, and one color melting to another in her quick movements, the effect was almost like an iridescence. Tender in tints as a sea-shell, there might have been danger of lapse into insipidity but for the accent of dark rims and curled lashes which individualized the eyes, and, too, the strong, straight lines of her contour, which, more than the note of dark color, marked her a Le Duc.
There are some women who naturally hold court, no matter what the conditions of life, and to whom tribute comes as naturally as the air they breathe. It often dates back into their spelling-class days, and I am not sure that it does not occasionally begin in the "perambulator."
This magnetic quality—one hesitates to use an expression so nervously prostrated by strenuous overwork, and yet it is well made and to hand—this magnetic quality, then, was probably, in Agnes Le Duc, the gift of the Latin strain grafted upon New England sturdiness and reserve, the one answering, as one might say, for ballast, while the other lent sail for the equable poising of a safe and brilliant life-craft.
So, also, was her unusual beauty markedly a composite and of elements so finely contrasting that their harmonizing seemed rather a succession of flashes, as of opposite electric currents meeting and breaking through the caprice of temperamental disturbance; as in the smile which won by its witchery, or the illumination with which rapid thought or sudden pity kindled her eye.
Educated alternately in Louisiana where she had recited her history lessons in French, and in New England, the pride and pet of a charmed Cambridge circle, with occasional trips abroad with her "parents," she was emerging, all unknowingly, a rather exceptional young woman for any place or time.
Seeing her this evening, an enthusiast might have likened her to the exquisite bud of a great tea-rose, regal on a slender stem—shy of unfolding, yet ultimately unafraid, even through the dewy veil of immaturity—knowing full well, though she might not stop to remember, the line of court roses in her pedigree.
Watching her so at a safe distance, one could not help wondering that she thought it worth her while to listen at all, seeing how her admirers waited upon her every utterance. To listen well has long been considered a grace—just to listen; but there is a still higher art, perhaps, in going a step beyond. It is to listen with enthusiasm, yes, even with eloquence. One having a genius for this sort of oratory, speaking through the inspired utterance of another, and of course supplying the inspiration, gains easily the reputation of "delightful conversational powers."
And this was precisely an unsuspected quality which made for the sweet girl much of the popularity which she had never analyzed or questioned. She could talk, and in several languages, familiarly, and when the invitation arrived, she did—upward, with respect, to her elders (she had learned that both in New Orleans and in Boston); downward to her inferiors—with gentle directness, unmixed with over-condescension; to right and to left among her companions, quite as a free-hearted girl, with spirit and camaraderie.
A quality, this, presaging social success certainly, and, it must be admitted, it is a quality which sometimes adorns natures wanting in depth of affection. That this was not true of Agnes Le Duc, however, seems to be clearly shown in an incident of this trip.
As she stood with her companions this evening, while one and another commented upon this or that feature of the shore, they came suddenly upon a congregation of negroes encircling an inlet between two curves in the levee, and, as the low sun shone clearly into the crowd, it became immediately plain that a baptism was in progress.