She was a very handsome woman—handsome in that perfectly regular style about which there can be no difference of opinion. Some might call her beauty cold, but all must own she was beautiful. Her profile was strongly marked, the forehead high and broad, the nose somewhat aquiline; the mouth proud, calm, resolute, yet infinitely sweet when she smiled; the eyes almost black, with long dark lashes, sculptured eyelids, and delicately-pencilled brows. She wore her hair as she might have worn it had she lived in the days of Pericles and Aspasia—simply drawn back from her forehead, and twisted in a heavy Greek knot at the back of her head; no fringed locks or fluffiness gave their factitious charm to her face. Her beauty was of that calm statuesque type which has nothing to do with chic, piquancy, dash, audacity, or any of those qualities which go such a long way in the composition of modern loveliness. All her tastes were artistic; but her love of art showed itself rather in the details of daily life than in any actual achievement with brush or pencil. She worked exquisitely in crewels and silks, drew her own designs from natural flowers, and produced embroideries on linen or satin which were worthy to be hung in a picture-gallery. She had a truly feminine love of needlework, and was never idle—in this the very reverse of Daphne, who loved to loll at ease, looking lazily at the sky or the landscape, and making up her mind to be tremendously busy by-and-by Daphne was always beginning work, and never finishing anything; while every task undertaken by Madoline was carried on to completion. The very essence of her own character was completeness—fulfilling every duty to the uttermost, satisfying in fullest measure every demand which home or society could make upon her. ‘I’m sure you’ll be tired of me, Lina,’ protested Daphne, kneeling on the fender-stool, while Madoline sat at work in her accustomed place, with a Japanese bamboo table at her side for the accommodation of her crewels. ‘You can’t imagine what a capacity I have for talking.’ ‘Then I must be very dull,’ murmured Madoline, smiling at her. ‘You have been home a week.’ ‘Well, certainly, you have had some experience of me; but you might think my loquacity a temporary affliction, and that when I had said my say after nearly two years of separation—oh, Lina, how horrid it was spending all my holidays at Asnières!—I should subside into comparative silence. But I shall always have worlds to tell you. It is my nature to say everything that comes into my mind. That’s why I got on so well with Dibb.’ ‘Was Dibb a dog, dear?’ ‘A dog!’ cried Daphne, with a sparkling smile. ‘No, Dibb was my schoolfellow—a dear good thing—stupid, clumsy, innately vulgar, but devoted to me. “A poor thing, but mine own,” as Touchstone says. We were tremendous chums.’