but this chase-loving Diana, continually surrounded by her nymphs, gives me a sort of alarm lest she should some day bring on me the fate of Actaeon.”
And, indeed, it required but one glance at Mademoiselle Danglars to comprehend the justness of Morcerf’s remark.
She was beautiful, but her beauty was of too marked and decided a character to please a fastidious taste; her hair was raven black, but its natural waves seemed somewhat rebellious; her eyes, of the same color as her hair, were surmounted by well-arched brows, whose great defect, however, consisted in an almost habitual frown, while her whole physiognomy wore that expression of firmness and decision so little in accordance with the gentler attributes of her sex—her nose was precisely what a sculptor would have chosen for a chiselled Juno.
Her mouth, which might have been found fault with as too large, displayed teeth of pearly whiteness, rendered still more conspicuous by the brilliant carmine of her lips, contrasting vividly with her naturally pale complexion.
But that which completed the almost masculine look Morcerf found so little to his taste, was a dark mole, of much larger dimensions than these freaks of nature generally are, placed just at the corner of her mouth; and the effect tended to increase the expression of self-dependence that characterized her countenance.
The rest of Mademoiselle Eugénie’s person was in perfect keeping with the head just described; she, indeed, reminded one of Diana, as Château-Renaud