At first they looked black, but if one
ventured inquiry, which was as dangerous as to gaze from the
battlements of Elsinore, he found them a not very dark brown. In
her face, however, especially when flushed, they had all the effect
of what Milton describes as
Quel sereno fulgor d'amabil nero.
A wise observer would have been a little troubled in regarding her
mouth. The sadness of a morbid sensibility hovered about it--the
sign of an imagination wrought upon from the centre of self. Her
lips were neither thin nor compressed--they closed lightly, and were
richly curved; but there was a mobility almost tremulous about the
upper lip that gave sign of the possibility of such an oscillation
of feeling as might cause the whole fabric of her nature to rock
dangerously.
The moment her father re-entered, she started from her stool on the
rug, and proceeded to make the tea. Her father took no notice of
her neglect, but drew a chair to the table, helped himself to a
piece of oat-cake, hastily loaded it with as much butter as it could
well carry, and while eating it forgot it and everything else in the
absorption of a volume he had brought in with him from his study, in
which he was tracing out some genealogical thread of which he
fancied he had got a hold. Mysie was very active now, and lost the
expression of far-off-ness which had hitherto characterized her
countenance; till, having poured out the tea, she too plunged at
once into her novel, and, like her father, forgot everything and
everybody near her.
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