She found
herself in the presence of a lady of mild, ingratiating manners, whose
dress was the perfection of neatness, taste, and matronly simplicity,
whose personal appearance was little less than a triumph of physical
resistance to the deteriorating influence of time. If Mrs. Lecount had
struck some fifteen or sixteen years off her real age, and had asserted
herself to be eight-and-thirty, there would not have been one man in a
thousand, or one woman in a hundred, who would have hesitated to believe
her. Her dark hair was just turning to gray, and no more. It was plainly
parted under a spotless lace cap, sparingly ornamented with mourning
ribbons. Not a wrinkle appeared on her smooth white forehead, or her
plump white cheeks. Her double chin was dimpled, and her teeth were
marvels of whiteness and regularity. Her lips might have been critically
considered as too thin, if they had not been accustomed to make the best
of their defects by means of a pleading and persuasive smile. Her large
black eyes might have looked fierce if they had been set in the face of
another woman, they were mild and melting in the face of Mrs. Lecount;
they were tenderly interested in everything she looked at--in Magdalen,
in the toad on the rock-work, in the back-yard view from the window; in
her own plump fair hands,--which she rubbed softly one over the other
while she spoke; in her own pretty cambric chemisette, which she had
a habit of looking at complacently while she listened to others.
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