At the time of which we are speaking, she might perhaps be twenty years of age; but her general appearance, her figure, and especially the strong character marked in her face, would have led one to suspect that she was older. She was certainly at that time a beautiful girl--very beautiful, handsome in the outline of her face, graceful and dignified in her mien, nay, sometimes almost majestic--a Juno rather than a Venus. But any Paris who might reject her, awed by the rigour of her dignity, would know at the time that he was wrong in his judgment. She was tall, but not so tall as to be unfeminine in her height. Her head stood nobly on her shoulders, giving to her bust that ease and grace of which sculptors are so fond, and of which tight-laced stays are so utterly subversive. Her hair was very dark--not black, but the darkest shade of brown, and was worn in simple rolls on the side of her face. It was very long and very glossy, soft as the richest silk, and gifted apparently with a delightful aptitude to keep itself in order. No stray jagged ends would show themselves if by chance she removed her bonnet, nor did it even look as though it had been prematurely crushed and required to be afresh puffed out by some head-dresser's mechanism. She had the forehead of a Juno; white, broad, and straight; not shining as are some foreheads, which seem as though an insufficient allowance of skin had been vouchsafed for their covering. It was a forehead on which an angel might long to press his lips--if angels have lips, and if, as we have been told, they do occasionally descend from their starry heights to love the daughters of men. Nor would an angel with a shade of human passion in his temperament have been contented with her forehead. Her mouth had all the richness of youth, and the full enticing curves and ruby colour of Anglo-Saxon beauty. Caroline Waddington was no pale, passionless goddess; her graces and perfections were human, and in being so were the more dangerous to humanity. Her forehead we have said, or should have said, was perfect; we dare not affirm quite so much in praise of her mouth: there was sometimes a hardness there, not in the lines of the feature itself, but in the expression which it conveyed, a want of tenderness, perhaps of trust, and too much self-confidence, it may be, for a woman's character. The teeth within it, however, were never excelled by any that ever graced the face of a woman. Her nose was not quite Grecian; had it been so, her face might have been fairer, but it would certainly have been less expressive. Nor could it be called _retrousse_, but it had the slightest possible tendency in that direction; and the nostrils were more open, more ready to breathe forth flashes of indignation than is ever the case with a truly Grecian nose.