Miss Stuyvesant
“She smiled; but he could see arise Her soul from far adown her eyes.”
“She is a beauty; it is only right I should forewarn you of that.”
“Dark or light?”
“Dark; that is her hair and eyes are almost oriental in their blackness, but her skin is fair, almost as dazzling as yours, Ona.”
Mrs. Sylvester threw a careless glance in the long mirror before which she was slowly completing her toilet, and languidly smiled. But whether at this covert compliment to her greatest charm or at some passing fancy of her own, it would be difficult to decide. “The dark hair and eyes come from her father,” remarked she in an abstracted way while she tried the effect of a bunch of snow-white roses at her waist with a backward toss of her proud blonde head. “His mother was a Greek. ‘Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon,’ ” she exclaimed in a voice as nearly gay as her indolent nature would allow. For this lady of fashion was in one of her happiest moods. Her dress, a new one, fitted her to perfection and the vision mirrored in the glass before her was not lacking, so far as she could see in one charm that could captivate. “Do you think she could fasten a ribbon, or arrange a bow?” she further inquired. “I should like to have someone about me with a knack for helping a body in an emergency, if possible. Sarah is absolutely the destruction of any bit of ribbon she undertakes to handle. Look at that knot of black velvet over there for instance, wouldn’t you think a raw Irish girl just from the other side would have known better than to tie it with half the wrong side showing?”