She was tall, but not
too commanding, and, as her hand was raised to fasten back a wisp of
hair, there was the motion of as small a wrist and as tapering a bare arm
as ever made prisoner of a man's neck.
Impulse was written in every feature, in the passionate eagerness of her
body; yet the line from the forehead to the chin, and the firm
shapeliness of the chin itself, gave promise of great strength of will.
From the glory of the crown of hair to the curve of the high instep of a
slim foot it was altogether a personality which hinted at history--at
tragedy, maybe.
"She'll have a history," Madame Bulteel, who now stood beside the girl,
herself a figure out of a picture by Velasquez, had said of her sadly;
for she saw in Fleda's rare qualities, in her strange beauty, happenings
which had nothing to do with the life she was living. So this duenna of
Gabriel Druse's household, this aristocratic, silent woman was ever on
the watch for some sudden revelation of a being which had not found
itself, and which must find itself through perils and convulsions.
That was why, to-day, she had hesitated to leave Fleda alone and come to
Carillon, to be at the bedside of a dying, friendless woman whom by
chance she had come to know.
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