There was a fine unconventionality in the cast of her features which was in itself an element of life. The low and broad forehead terminated in far-reaching and strongly defined eyebrows. The nose, long and finely chiselled, especially about the nostrils, descended from between the eyes in a line which, towards the end, had just enough of an upward tendency to redeem it from classic tameness. Tameness, in fact, is the word most expressive of everything that the young Countess was not. Her mouth was generous; the upper lip, short and slender, lay like a coral snake upon the full and voluptuously moulded lip below; thence curved forth the chin, clean cut and mettlesome, which she habitually carried high, and to which she communicated movements of fascinating wilfulness. Her profile, as a whole, was therefore of the concave rather than the convex order, and possessed a charmingly wild, barbaric quality, by no means inconsistent with a thorough refinement. Of her grand figure I have already spoken. Her bearing was elastic and vigorous, yet pervaded always by the subtle and inevitable dignity of a high-bred lady. A kind of scarlet barret-cap surmounted the heavy black coil of her hair; and she wore a close-fitting dress of black serge, with a scarlet bow fluttering at the throat and a scarlet belt around the waist. It was a costume simple to severity, but in which she looked diabolically handsome. Her only ornaments on this occasion were two broad hoops of gold in her ears, and, on her left hand, an antique ring with an enormous ruby in it. Such a ruby not one lady in a thousand would dare to put on; it must have come to her, I thought, from the tomb of some early royal ancestress. It harmonised well with what I took to be the essential character of the Countess Almara. Here, however, has been more than enough of personal description, which is never so futile as when it attempts to catch the secret of a lovely woman's charm. As an artist I have dwelt upon details which to the ordinary eye would have combined for the production of a single effect more or less acutely pleasurable. I looked at her with the instinctive longing which an artist feels to interpret beauty upon canvas; and the critical admiration of my glance met and partly disconcerted the critical inquiry of her own. 'I have much happiness in speaking to Monsieur Campbell,' she said after a moment in a deep fresh voice. 'To me it is not as if I were speaking to a stranger.' We walked on slowly, the young Countess between her mother and me. I felt a childish desire to utter something brilliant and profound; and, knowing by experience that such a wish is always fatal to the deed, I took refuge in the intensity of commonplace. 'Mademoiselle finds this place enjoyable?' 'After the city, truly, yes.' 'Paris is indeed hot in this month.' 'It is from St. Petersburg that we come here.' 'Mademoiselle the Countess is, then, a Russian?'