she

The stranger, or whatever she were, remained standing precisely on that spot of the kitchen floor to which Hollingsworth's kindly hand had impelled her.  The cloak falling partly off, she was seen to be a very young woman dressed in a poor but decent gown, made high in the neck, and without any regard to fashion or smartness.  Her brown hair fell down from beneath a hood, not in curls but with only a slight wave; her face was of a wan, almost sickly hue, betokening habitual seclusion from the sun and free atmosphere, like a flower-shrub that had done its best to blossom in too scanty light.  To complete the pitiableness of her aspect, she shivered either with cold, or fear, or nervous excitement, so that you might have beheld her shadow vibrating on the fire-lighted wall.  In short, there has seldom been seen so depressed and sad a figure as this young girl's; and it was hardly possible to help being angry with her, from mere despair of doing anything for her comfort.  The fantasy occurred to me that she was some desolate kind of a creature, doomed to wander about in snowstorms; and that, though the ruddiness of our window panes had tempted her into a human dwelling, she would not remain long enough to melt the icicles out of her hair. Another conjecture likewise came into my mind.  Recollecting Hollingsworth's sphere of philanthropic action, I deemed it possible that he might have brought one of his guilty patients, to be wrought upon and restored to spiritual health by the pure influences which our

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Blithedale Romance

Close by one of the numerous stopping-places was a red house, where a number of young people were gathered round some gymnastic apparatus. A young man and a young woman each held a rope in a "giant's strides." He set off after her with all his strength; a few steps on the ground, and then a long swing in the air; then again a few steps, and another long swing. Would he reach her? Never! She was the lighter, the more active, and she had undoubtedly stronger legs--she ran trip, trip, trip, trip; her legs hardly seemed to be apart, and how she flew swinging through the air! Her hair, her dress streaming after her, a very Iris! Both Fuerst and Tora followed this chase, silent but eager. Tora felt his presence at her back, like fire; he had come nearer; and, turning abruptly, she went into the cabin and sat down among the others. He was standing on the landing-place when she went on shore at the Point; he offered her his hand, but she turned away; he wanted to carry her box, but she ran off. He went on board again to go up into the harbour.

Bjoerstjerne Bjoernson
The Heritage of the Kurts, Volume II (of 2)

When my senses returned to me I found myself lying on the floor of the wagon-house in the back yard. Glancing from my half-opened eyes, for I was still speechless, I saw Marie, white as a sheet, her hair all falling about her dishevelled dress. She was seated on one of those boxes that we put on the front of wagons to drive from, "voorkissies" they are called, and as her eyes were watching me I knew that she lived. By her stood a tall and dark young man whom I had never seen before. He was holding her hand and looking at her anxiously, and even then I felt angry with him. Also I saw other things; for instance, my old father leaning down and looking at _me_ anxiously, and outside in the yard, for there were no doors to the wagon-house, a number of men with guns in their hands, some of whom I knew and others who were strangers. In the shadow, too, against the wall, stood my blood mare with her head hanging down and trembling all over. Not far from her the roan lay upon the ground, its flank quite red.

H. Rider Haggard
Marie

"I am not intending to say one word about your treatment of me that day over in the forest, although it was very bad, and you have acted abominably ever since. Now is not that kind in me?" And she softly laughed as she peeped up at the poor fellow from beneath those sweeping lashes, with the premeditated purpose of tantalizing him, I suppose. She was beginning to know her power over him, and it was never greater than at this moment. Her beauty had its sweetest quality, for the princess was sunk and the woman was dominant, with flushed face and flashing eyes that caught a double luster from the glowing love that made her heart beat so fast. Her gown, too, was the best she could have worn to show her charms. She must have known Brandon was there, and must have dressed especially to go to him. She wore her favorite long flowing outer sleeve, without the close fitting inner one. It was slit to the shoulder, and gave entrancing glimpses of her arms with every movement, leaving them almost bare when she lifted her hands, which was often, for she was as full of gestures as a Frenchwoman. Her bodice was cut low, both back and front, showing her large perfectly molded throat and neck, like an alabaster pillar of beauty and strength, and disclosing her bosom just to its shadowy incurving, white and billowy as drifted snow. Her hair was thrown back in an attempt at a coil, though, like her own rebellious nature, it could not brook restraint, and persistently escaped in a hundred little curls that fringed her face and lay upon the soft white nape of

Charles Major
When Knighthood Was in Flower

Fragment of a relief which probably commemorates a musical or dramatic victory. Two draped female figures move to the right: the foremost of these (Artemis) holds out in both hands a lighted torch; she also has a quiver with a bow projecting from it, behind her shoulder. The second figure, who is probably Leto, holds in her left hand a sceptre, the head of which is formed by a pomegranate flower. The drapery of both figures is arranged in the archaistic style. Both figures wear a long chiton with sleeves, over which is a long full garment reaching nearly to the feet; over this again is a diploidion girt at the waist. A mantle falls from the left shoulder of Artemis, floating to below her knees; her companion with her right hand draws forward over her right shoulder the edge of a mantle, the other end of which falls over her left arm. The heads of both figures are encircled by a diadem, from beneath which two long plaits of hair fall on each shoulder.

A. H. Smith
A Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, Volume I (of 2)

did so, some one moved the curtain from inside and Mr. Eglinton _actually held the curtain to one side to permit the materialized form to pass out_ before he went into the cabinet himself. The figure that appeared was that of a woman clothed in loose white garments that fell to her feet. Her eyes were black and her long black hair fell over her shoulders. I suspected at the time who she was, but each one in the circle was so certain she came for him or for her, that I said nothing, and only mentally asked if it were my sister that I might receive a proof of her identity. On the following evening (Sunday) Colonel Lean and I were "sitting" together, when Emily came to the table to assure us that it was she whom we had seen, and that she would appear again on Monday and show herself more clearly. I asked her to think of some means by which she could prove her identity with the spirit that then spoke to us, and she said, "I will hold up my right hand." Colonel Lean cautioned me not to mention this promise to any one, that we might be certain of the correctness of the test. Accordingly, on the Monday evening we assembled for our second _sance_ with Mr. Eglinton, and the same form appeared, and walking out much closer to us, _held up the right hand_. Colonel Lean, anxious not to be deceived by his own senses, asked the company what the spirit was doing. "Cannot you see?" was the answer. "She is holding up her hand." On this occasion Emily came with all her old characteristics about her, and there would have been no possibility

Florence Marryatt
There is no Death

Truly she was a lovely girl, or rather, young woman, for she must have been two or three-and-twenty. Not very tall, her proportions were rounded and exquisite, and her movements as graceful as those of a doe. Altogether she was doe-like, especially in the fineness of her lines and her large and liquid eyes. She was a dark beauty, with rich brown, waving hair, a clear olive complexion, a perfectly shaped mouth and very red lips. To me she looked more Italian or Spanish than Anglo-Saxon, and I believe that, as a matter of fact, she had some southern blood in her on her father’s side. She wore a dress of soft rose colour, and her only ornaments were a string of pearls and a single red camellia. I could see but one blemish, if it were a blemish, in her perfect person, and that was a curious white mark upon her breast, which in its shape exactly resembled the crescent moon.

H. Rider Haggard
The Ivory Child

Pierre Delarue insisted that Emerson Mead should come into his house for some wine and wait until they should know the worst or the best concerning little Paul. He sat alone in the room where first he had seen Marguerite, his anxiety about the child driven quite out of his mind by the thought that the long hours alone with her, out on the hills, their hearts and minds united in a common purpose, had come to an end, that she was soon to be another man's wife, and that he would never see her again. After a time the door opened and she came toward him, smiling gladly. The color had come back to her cheeks and her eyes were bright, though there were still dark rings around them, and her face told of the weariness her brain had not yet recognized. So absorbed had she been in giving the physician assistance and carrying out his directions that she had not thought of her appearance. Her white dress, which yesterday had been fresh and dainty, was in tatters and bedraggled strings, and her hair hung down her back in a disheveled mass. But she came shining down upon Mead's dark thoughts, fresh and beautiful and glorious beyond compare. He did not remember rising, but presently he knew that he was on his feet and that she was standing in front of him. He did not even hear her say, "Doctor Long says my little Bye-Bye will live and that there will probably be no serious results."

Florence Finch Kelly
With Hoops of Steel

'A little incident later on threw a curious light upon her. We had moved on to the other side of the pond and were basking in the fir-wood. The afternoon sun was slanting through the branches on to the bosom of the pond; a splendid Scotch fir just beside us tossed out its red-limbed branches over a great bed of green reeds, starred here and there with yellow irises. The woman from the keeper's cottage near had brought us out some tea, and most of us had fallen into a sybaritic frame of mind in which talk seemed to be a burden on the silence and easeful peace of the scene. Suddenly Wallace and Forbes fell upon the question of Balzac, of whom Wallace has been making a study lately, and were soon landed in a discussion of Balzac's method of character-drawing. Are Eugène de Rastignac, le Père Goriot, and old Grandet real beings or mere incarnations of qualities, mathematical deductions from a given point? At last I was drawn in, and the Stuarts: Stuart has trained his wife in Balzac, and she has a dry original way of judging a novel, which is stimulating and keeps the ball rolling. It was the first time that the talk had not centred in one way or another round Miss Bretherton, who, of course, was the first consideration throughout the day in all our minds. We grew vehement and forgetful, till at last a little movement of hers diverted the general current. She had taken off her hat and was leaning back against the oak under which she sat, watching with parted lips and a gaze of the purest delight and wonder the movements of a nut-hatch

Galloway Hills for his adherence to the Covenant. His son Thomas, the brother of Nanny, had been long outlawed, and was supposed, even by his sister--his only sister--to have effected his escape to America. It was a beautiful and peaceful evening in the months of harvest--all was cheerfulness around. The mirthful band was employed, at no great distance, in cutting down and collecting into sheaves and stooks the abundant crop; and the husbandman, with his coat deposited in the hedge at the end of the field, was as busily employed as any of his band. The voice of man and woman, lad and lass, master and servant, was mixed in one continuous flow of rustic wit and rural jest. The surface of the Frith was smooth as glass, and the Galloway Hills looked down from heaven, and up from beneath, with brows of serenity and friendship. One or two vessels were tiding it up in the midst of the stream, with a motion scarcely perceptible. They had all sails set, and looked as if suspended in a glassy network, half-way betwixt heaven and earth. The sun shone westward, near to his setting, and the white and softly-rolled clouds only served to make the blue of a clear sky still more deep and lovely. The lassie wi' the lint-white locks spread over an eye of bonny blue--

Various
Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland

Then I come to a wooden _barraque_, a hive buzzing with children. They are clambering at the windows and playing in the dirt before the door, all clad in a many-colored collection of scraps which an ingenious mother has pieced together. A little boy, wearing the blue _callot_ of a poilu on the back of his head, sits on the doorsill. He smiles and stands up, and tells me his mother is inside. Within I find the mother seated in a room of good-natured disorder, nursing her latest born. Her lavish smile of welcome lights her broad sunburned face framed in tawny braids, and she indicates a bench for me with the ease and authority of a long practiced hostess. She sits there with the infant at her ample breast, and on her face is written unquestioning satisfaction with her part in life. A swift laughing tale I hear, of little frocks outgrown and of sabots worn through, and no place to buy anything, and little Jean so thin and nervous, "but no wonder, Mademoiselle, for he was born during the evacuation, and only Ccile to take care of me, and she just sixteen years old, and I had to be carried in a wheelbarrow." I picture the flight, the father away at the front, the mother unable to walk, yet marshalling her little ones, comforting, cajoling, scolding, and feeding them through it all. The baby finishes with a little contented sigh and the proud mother exhibits him. "It's a boy, Mademoiselle," as exuberantly as though it were her first instead of her ninth. "_C'est un petit garon de l'Armistice_" with a happy blush.

Katherine Shortall
Where the Sabots Clatter Again

With that Sister Agatha began to sing, and Evangeline took one side of her skirt in each hand, and standing in the middle of the room, she danced slowly and gracefully, first raising one hand above her head, then the other, bending now this way, now that, and always making her skirt take a curious shape. Mary sat holding the arms of her chair very tightly, and never taking her eyes off Evangeline; but Sister Agatha stood with her back to the fireplace, just by the bell-handle, and exactly as Evangeline came to a standstill in the middle of the room and bowed so low to Mary that her golden hair, which had become looser whilst she danced, almost touched the floor, just at that moment the door opened, and a woman came in, carrying a great box with a shiny black lid, and she placed the box at Mary's feet.

Once before his heart had risen as it rose now. It had been the fag end of a long party, and Donnegan, rousing from a drunken sleep, staggered to the window. Leaning there to get the freshness of the night air against his hot face, he had looked up, and saw the white face of the moon going up the sky; and a sudden sense of the blackness and loathing against the city had come upon Donnegan, and the murky color of his own life; and when he turned away from the window he was sober. And so it was that he now stared up at the girl. At her breast she held a cloak together with one hand and the other hand touched the railing of the stairs. He saw one foot suspended for the next step, as though the sight of him kept her back in fear. To the miserable soul of Donnegan she seemed all that was lovely, young, and pure; and her hair, old gold in the shadow and pale gold where the lamp struck it, was to Donnegan like a miraculous light about her face.

She therefore walked before me, and I followed her a little way, until she arrived at a great door overlaid with copper; and she stopped at this door, and called out in Persian, and immediately a damsel approached, with light and nimble step. Her trousers were tucked up to her knees, and I beheld a pair of legs that confounded the mind and the eye by their beauty: they were like two columns of alabaster, and ornamented with anklets of gold set with jewels. The skirts of her outer clothes were tucked up under her arms, and her sleeves were turned up from her arms, and I looked at her white wrists, and upon them were two pairs of bracelets: in her ears were two ear-rings of pearls; and upon her neck was a necklace of costly jewels; and on her head, a koofeeyeh,[VIII_40] quite new, adorned with precious gems. She had tucked the skirt of her inner tunic within the band of her trousers, and appeared as though she had been employed in some active work. And when she beheld me, she said, with an eloquent and sweet tongue that I had never heard surpassed in sweetness, O my mother, is this he who hath come to read the letter? She answered, Yes. And the damsel stretched forth her hand to me with the letter. There was, between her and the door, a distance of about half a rod;[VIII_41] and I extended my hand to take the letter from her, and put my head and shoulders within the door to draw near to her; but before I knew what she was about to do, the old woman placed her head against my back, and pushed me

Anonymous
The Thousand and One Nights, Vol. I.

We guessed her age to be forty-five at least, but we found out afterward that we were mistaken. She was only thirty-five. She was tall and thin and pale, one of those drab-tinted persons who look as if they had never felt a rosy emotion in their lives. She had any amount of silky, fawn-coloured hair, always combed straight back from her face, and pinned in a big, tight bun just above her neck--the last style in the world for any woman with Miss Ponsonby's nose to adopt. But then I doubt if Miss Ponsonby had any idea what her nose was really like. I don't believe she ever looked at herself critically in a mirror in her life. Her features were rather nice, and her expression tamely sweet; her eyes were big, timid, china-blue orbs that looked as if she had been badly scared when she was little and had never got over it; she never wore anything but black, and, to crown all, her first name was Alicia.

Lucy Maud Montgomery
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906

"What is she?" he thought, "this Californian woman with her hair of gold and her unmistakable intellect, her marble face crossed now and again by the animation of the clever American woman? What an anomaly to find on the shores of the Pacific! All I had heard of The Doomswoman, The Golden Senorita, gave me no idea of this. What a pity that our houses are at war! She is not maternal, at all events; I never saw a baby held so awkwardly. What a poise of head! She looks better fitted for tragedy than for this little comedy of life in the Californias. A sovereignty would suit her,--were it not for her eyes. They are not quite so calm and just and inexorable as the rest of her face. She would not even make a good household tyrant, like Dona Jacoba Duncan. Unquestionably she is religious, and swaddled in all the traditions of her race; but her eyes,--they are at odds with all the rest of her. They are not lovely eyes; they lack softness and languor and tractability; their expression changes too often, and they mirror too much intelligence for loveliness, but they never will be old eyes, and they never will cease to look. And they are the eyes best worth looking into that I have ever seen. No, a sovereignty would not suit her at all; a salon might. But, like a few of us, she is some years ahead of her sphere. Glory be to the Californias--of the future, when we are dirt, and our children have found the gold!"

Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
The Doomswoman

Having made a rough, and, in truth, a very distorted sketch of the dragons, she gathered up her colours and portfolio, and prepared to search farther afield for objects on which to expend her genius. She followed Susy into the octagon hall, but, seeing the wide front doors open, went out, and, crossing a by no means well-kept field, entered the paddock, where the colts, Joe and Robin, had disported themselves before their sale. The paddock was skirted by a copse of small fir-trees, and Antonia sniffed the air as she walked towards it. Antonia was in a rusty black dress, with very little material in the skirt, and an extremely long train, which she never held up. She had just got to the edge of the copse of young trees, and was preparing to make a sketch of their straight trunks with the delicate sunlight shining across them, when a strange noise attracted her attention. She dropped her colour box, uttered one of her affected little shrieks, and then dropped on her knees beside a child who was lying face downwards on the grass. The child's dark hair completely covered her face, but the sobs which shook her slender little frame were too violent to be inaudible. Whatever ailed the child, she was prostrated by such a tempest of grief that Antonia forgot high art in an honest wish to comfort human misery.

L. T. Meade
Red Rose and Tiger Lily

Phiber is different.  A very fin de siecle kid, Phiber Optik. Barlow says he looks like an Edwardian dandy.  He does rather. Shaven neck, the sides of his skull cropped hip-hop close, unruly tangle of black hair on top that looks pomaded, he stays up till four a.m.  and misses all the sessions, then hangs out in payphone booths with his acoustic coupler gutsily CRACKING SYSTEMS RIGHT IN THE MIDST OF THE HEAVIEST LAW ENFORCEMENT DUDES IN THE U.S., or at least PRETENDING to. . . . Unlike "Frank Drake."  Drake, who wrote Dorothy Denning out of nowhere, and asked for an interview for his cheapo cyberpunk fanzine, and then started grilling her on her ethics. She was squirmin', too. . . .  Drake, scarecrow-tall with his floppy blond mohawk, rotting tennis shoes and black leather jacket lettered ILLUMINATI in red, gives off an unmistakeable air of the bohemian literatus.  Drake is the kind of guy who reads British industrial design magazines and appreciates William Gibson because the quality of the prose is so tasty. Drake could never touch a phone or a keyboard again, and he'd still have the nose-ring and the blurry photocopied fanzines and the sampled industrial music.  He's a radical punk with a desktop-publishing rig and an Internet address. Standing next to Drake, the diminutive Phiber looks like he's been physically coagulated out of phone-lines.  Born to phreak.

"Yes," answered the visitor. She lifted to Kitty a sallow and relaxed face the expression of which gave me a sharp, pitying pang of prepossession in her favor: it was beautiful that so plain a woman should so ardently rejoice in another's loveliness. "Are you Mrs. Baldry?" she asked, almost as if she were glad about it, and stood up. The bones of her bad stays clicked as she moved. Well, she was not so bad. Her body was long and round and shapely, and with a noble squareness of the shoulders; her fair hair curled diffidently about a good brow; her gray eyes, though they were remote, as if anything worth looking at in her life had kept a long way off, were full of tenderness; and though she was slender, there was something about her of the wholesome, endearing heaviness of the ox or the trusted big dog. Yet she was bad enough. She was repulsively furred with neglect and poverty, as even a good glove that has dropped down behind a bed in a hotel and has lain undisturbed for a day or two is repulsive when the chambermaid retrieves it from the dust and fluff.

Rebecca West
The Return of the Soldier

Her eyes were so blurred with tears that she did not notice at what particular moment another occupant had usurped the chair of Major Sarle. It was a man this time.  April hastily seized a book and began to read. He must have stolen up with the silence of a tiger, and he reminded her of tigers somehow, though she could not quite tell why, except that he was curiously powerful and graceful looking.  His hair, which grew in a thick short mat, was strongly sprinkled with silver, but his skin, though brick-red, was unlined.  She judged him to be a sailor-man, for he had the clear and innocent eye of one who has looked long on great spaces. These were her conclusions, made while diligently reading her book.  He, too, was busy reading in the same fashion, but, manlike, was slower in his deductions.  By the time she had finished with his hair he had not got much further than her charming ankles.  Certainly, he had ascertained that she was a pretty woman before he took possession of his chair, but that was merely instinct, the fulfilling of a human law.  Detail, like destruction, was to come after.  He lingered over the first detail.  They were such very pretty ankles.  It did not seem right that they should be resting on the hard deck instead of on a canvas foot-rest.  He remembered that his own chair had a foot-rest, but it was in his cabin. Should he go and fetch it?  Dared he offer it to her?  He was on hail-fellow-well-met terms with lions and tigers, as April had curiously divined, but having enjoyed fewer encounters with women, was slightly shy

Cynthia Stockley
Blue Aloes

lengthen out into a grin. For a moment a chill fell on me, and then, laughing at myself for a fool, I lifted the curtain and passed into the great hall. At first I thought it was empty, but a second glance showed me Madame, seated at a small table, in the recess of the bow window that overlooked the park. Her face, leaning on her hand, was half averted from me, and I caught, a glimpse of a small foot resting on one of the lions' heads in which the legs of the table finished. The foot was beating up and down as if in unison with the impatience of Madame's thoughts, but I could see nothing of her face beyond its contour. She was, as usual, robed in black, wearing no jewels except a gold collar round her neck. For a moment I stood in silence, looking at her, half thinking that here was a chance to speak out what was in my heart, and then stilling the words by the thought of how impossible it was for a poor man to woo a rich woman.

S. (Sidney) Levett-Yeats
The Chevalier d'Auriac

At the doorway Josephine turned, and threw to her husband, who was sitting near the chimney, one of those gay smiles with which a sensitive woman whose soul comes at moments into her face, rendering it beautiful, gives expression to irresistible hopes. Woman's greatest charm lies in her constant appeal to the generosity of man by the admission of a weakness which stirs his pride and wakens him to the nobler sentiments. Is not such an avowal of weakness full of magical seduction? When the rings of the portiere had slipped with a muffled sound along the wooden rod, she turned towards Claes, and made as though she would hide her physical defects by resting her hand upon a chair and drawing herself gracefully forward. It was calling him to help her. Balthazar, sunk for a moment in contemplation of the olive-tinted head, which attracted and satisfied the eye as it stood out in relief against the soft gray background, rose to take his wife in his arms and carry her to her sofa. This was what she wanted.

Honore de Balzac
The Alkahest

But he was not allowed to be silent very long. Every one had something to say to him. The fact was they wished to make him talk. The ladies petted him and asked him questions, and the men asked him questions too, and joked with him, as the men on the steamer had done when he crossed the Atlantic. Fauntleroy did not quite understand why they laughed so sometimes when he answered them, but he was so used to seeing people amused when he was quite serious, that he did not mind. He thought the whole evening delightful. The magnificent rooms were so brilliant with lights, there were so many flowers, the gentlemen seemed so gay, and the ladies wore such beautiful, wonderful dresses, and such sparkling ornaments in their hair and on their necks. There was one young lady who, he heard them say, had just come down from London, where she had spent the "season"; and she was so charming that he could not keep his eyes from her. She was a rather tall young lady with a proud little head, and very soft dark hair, and large eyes the color of purple pansies, and the color on her cheeks and lips was like that of a rose. She was dressed in a beautiful white dress, and had pearls around her throat. There was one strange thing about this young lady. So many gentlemen stood near her, and seemed anxious to please her, that Fauntleroy thought she must be something like a princess. He was so much interested in her that without knowing it he drew nearer and nearer to her and at last she turned and spoke to him.

Various
St. Nicholas v. 13 No. 9 July 1886

As luck would have it, the first who came to meet us at the gate was Lorna, with nothing whatever upon her head (the weather being summerly) but her beautiful hair shed round her; and wearing a sweet white frock tucked in, and showing her figure perfectly. In her joy she ran straight up to the cart; and then stopped and gazed at Benita. At one glance her old nurse knew her: "Oh, the eyes, the eyes!" she cried, and was over the rail of the cart in a moment, in spite of all her substance. Lorna, on the other hand, looked at her with some doubt and wonder, as though having right to know much about her, and yet unable to do so. But when the foreign woman said something in Roman language, and flung new hay from the cart upon her, as if in a romp of childhood, the young maid cried, "Oh, Nita, Nita!" and fell upon her breast, and wept; and after that looked round at us.

R. D. Blackmore
Lorna Doone

“Stick close to me an' put your feet down easy,” he whispered. How tall and dark he loomed in the fading light! Helen thrilled, as she had often of late, at the strange, potential force of the man. Stepping softly, without the least sound, Dale entered this straggly bit of woods, which appeared to have narrow byways and nooks. Then presently he came to the top of a well-wooded slope, dark as pitch, apparently. But as Helen followed she perceived the trees, and they were thin dwarf spruce, partly dead. The slope was soft and springy, easy to step upon without noise. Dale went so cautiously that Helen could not hear him, and sometimes in the gloom she could not see him. Then the chill thrills ran over her. Bo kept holding on to Helen, which fact hampered Helen as well as worked somewhat to disprove Bo's boast. At last level ground was reached. Helen made out a light-gray background crossed by black bars. Another glance showed this to be the dark tree-trunks against the open park.

Zane Grey
The Man of the Forest

To get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard at the bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box, in which he usually kept his letters from women, and from it came an odour of dry dust and withered roses. First he saw a handkerchief with pale little spots. It was a handkerchief of hers. Once when they were walking her nose had bled; he had forgotten it. Near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature given him by Emma: her toilette seemed to him pretentious, and her languishing look in the worst possible taste. Then, from looking at this image and recalling the memory of its original, Emma's features little by little grew confused in his remembrance, as if the living and the painted face, rubbing one against the other, had effaced each other. Finally, he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations relating to their journey, short, technical, and urgent, like business notes. He wanted to see the long ones again, those of old times. In order to find them at the bottom of the box, Rodolphe disturbed all the others, and mechanically began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and things, finding pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and hair--hair! dark and fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box, broke when it was opened.

Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary

That evening, accompanied by Colonel and Mrs. Wylie, we attended a reception at the Maharaja's palace. The durbar hall, which was filled with men in uniform, was of beautiful proportions, and very handsomely decorated and furnished. After the usual introductions and some conversation with the chief officers, we were invited to visit the Maharani in her own apartments, and having ascended a flight of steps and passed through numerous corridors and luxuriously furnished rooms, we were shown into a spacious apartment, the prevailing colour of which was rose, lighted by lamps of the same colour. The Maharani was sitting on a sofa at the further end of the room, gorgeously apparelled in rose-coloured gauze dotted over with golden spangles; her skirts were very voluminous, and she wore magnificent jewels on her head and about her person. Two Maids of Honour stood behind her, holding fans, and dressed in the same colour as their mistress, but without jewels. On each side of her, forming a semicircle, were grouped the ladies of the Court, all arrayed in artistically contrasting colours; they were more or less pretty and refined looking, and the Maharani herself was extremely handsome. My wife was placed by her side on the sofa, and carried on a long conversation with her through one of the ladies who spoke Hindustani and acted as Interpreter. The Maharani presented Lady Roberts with a beautiful little Chinese pug-dog, and the Maharaja gave me a gold-mounted _kookri_ (Gurkha knife). After this little ceremony there was a grand

Frederick Sleigh Roberts
Forty-one years in India

Mrs. Spalding was the daughter of a plain, substantial farmer, by the name of Hart, of Oneida County, New York. She was above the medium height, slender in form, with coarse features, dart brown hair, blue eyes, rather dark complexion, coarse voice, of a serious turn of mind, and quick in understanding language. In fact she was remarkable in acquiring the Nez Perc language, so as to understand and converse with the natives quite easily by the time they reached their station at Lapwai. She could paint indifferently in water-colors, and had been taught, while young, all the useful branches of domestic life; could spin, weave, and sew, etc.; could prepare an excellent meal at short notice; was generally sociable, but not forward in conversation with or in attentions to gentlemen. In this particular she was the opposite of Mrs. Whitman. With the native women Mrs. Spalding always appeared easy and cheerful, and had their unbounded confidence and respect. She was remarkable for her firmness and decision of character in whatever she or her husband undertook. She never appeared to be alarmed or excited at any difficulty, dispute, or alarms common to the Indian life around her. She was considered by the Indian men as a brave, fearless woman, and was respected and esteemed by all. Though she was frequently left for days alone, her husband being absent on business, but a single attempted insult was ever offered her. Understanding their language, her cool, quick perception of the design enabled her to give so complete and

William Henry Gray
A History of Oregon, 1792-1849

Now while they were waiting for the savages and could still see some of them out on the water, while others were disembarking on the shore, Gudrid was sitting just inside the door of her house with her child asleep on her lap.  She sat full in the sun, and was quiet and happy, as she generally was.  Presently there passed a dark shadow across the open door.  Gudrid looked up quickly.  A woman stood there inside the pillars of the porch and looked fixedly at her.  She was dressed in black, drawn very tightly across her; she was about Gudrid's own height, and had a ribbon over her hair--which was of a light-brown colour, and not coarse as most of the savages' was.  She was a pale, grave woman, and had the biggest eyes Gudrid had ever seen.  They were wide open, grey, and had a world of sorrow in them.  Gudrid was not at all afraid, because she thought the woman looked too sad to be wicked or ill-disposed; besides, she did not believe that any one could be ill-disposed to her.  So she smiled up in her face and waited for her to speak.

Maurice Hewlett
Gudrid the Fair

"He would be sweet . . . my baby," thought Sophia, staring at the big round heads and little necks with that pang of yearning pity without which she could never look on children. It is a great truth that no woman has ever loved a man unless she has wanted to bear him a child, and the knowledge that she would never make this greatest of all offerings to Richard pressed on Sophia's heart. She was not one of those women who desire children as an end in themselves, to whom they would mean more than the husband; she was of those who long to bear them to the loved man because for him the utmost must be suffered and given; but for any other man it would be a thing unspeakable. Therefore she saw the best put out of life for her, and she hurried away from the children on the steps. Turning down a narrow lane she came to a door in the wall, and pushing it open she looked into what seemed a lake of green light, flecked with swaying rounds of sun and chequered with deeper green shadows--a garden run luxuriantly wild. Sophia stepped inside, and on her right, built half against and half on the wall, she saw a little ochre-washed house with faded blue shutters. Wandering on, she came to some lilacs in hard, red bud that hung over a well, and passing under the arch they made she found the further end of the garden. There a flight of uneven old steps led to the top of the wall, and she went up them. At the head of the steps, the wall--which was the outer fortification of the town--widened into a circle some twenty feet

F. Tennyson Jesse
Beggars on Horseback

It seemed to be a sort of pride with her that men who had anything remarkable about them--rank, character, or fame--she must and would gain for herself. Gravity and seriousness she made give way to her, and, wild, strange creature as she was, she found favor even with discretion itself. Not that the young were at all cut short in consequence. Everybody had his share, his day, his hour, in which she contrived to charm and to enchain him. It was therefore natural enough that before long she should have had the Architect in her eye, looking out so unconsciously as he did from under his long black hair, and standing so calm and quiet in the background. To all her questions she received short, sensible answers; but he did not seem inclined to allow himself to be carried away further, and at last, half provoked, half in malice, she resolved that she would make him the hero of a day, and so gain him for her court.

In this village there was a Cossack named Korzh, who had a labourer whom people called Peter the Orphan--perhaps because no one remembered either his father or mother. The church elder, it is true, said that they had died of the pest in his second year; but my grandfather's aunt would not hear of that, and tried with all her might to furnish him with parents, although poor Peter needed them about as much as we need last year's snow. She said that his father had been in Zaporozhe, and had been taken prisoner by the Turks, amongst whom he underwent God only knows what tortures, until having, by some miracle, disguised himself as a eunuch, he made his escape. Little cared the black-browed youths and maidens about Peter's parents. They merely remarked, that if he only had a new coat, a red sash, a black lambskin cap with a smart blue crown on his head, a Turkish sabre by his side, a whip in one hand and a pipe with handsome mountings in the other, he would surpass all the young men. But the pity was, that the only thing poor Peter had was a grey gaberdine with more holes in it than there are gold pieces in a Jew's pocket. But that was not the worst of it. Korzh had a daughter, such a beauty as I think you can hardly have chanced to see. My grandfather's aunt used to say--and you know that it is easier for a woman to kiss the Evil One than to call any one else a beauty--that this Cossack maiden's cheeks were as plump and fresh as the pinkest poppy when, bathed in God's dew, it unfolds its petals, and coquets with the rising sun; that her brows

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
Taras Bulba and Other Tales

"At half-past eight in the evening, Mrs. Hazard came in and went to a hall bed-room in the front, and knocked at the door of said room. She was accompanied by her maid, Esther Doerner. After she knocked, the door was opened from within by Lena Kimball. Lena attempted to close the door, but Mrs. Hazard's superior strength forced an opening, and she and her maid entered." Now let lynx-eyed Esther take up the narrative for a brief space: "Lena was but slightly clothed, having only a skirt and a sacque on. Lena asked: 'Who is this woman?' Mrs. Hazard replied, 'I am his lawful wife--you are his mistress!'" Then ensued a scene which Margaret and Esther are in accord in describing: "Lena attacked Mrs. Hazard, slapped her in the face and pulled her hair, said captain, meantime, holding his wife's hands and thus preventing her defending herself!"

William Howe
Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations

For the Countess Czerlaski was undeniably beautiful. As she seated herself by Mrs. Barton on the sofa, Milly’s eyes, indeed, rested--must it be confessed?--chiefly on the details of the tasteful dress, the rich silk of a pinkish lilac hue (the Countess always wore delicate colours in an evening), the black lace pelerine, and the black lace veil falling at the back of the small closely-braided head. For Milly had one weakness--don’t love her any the less for it, it was a pretty woman’s weakness--she was fond of dress; and often, when she was making up her own economical millinery, she had romantic visions how nice it would be to put on really handsome stylish things--to have very stiff balloon sleeves, for example, without which a woman’s dress was nought in those days. You and I, too, reader, have our weakness, have we not? which makes us think foolish things now and then. Perhaps it may lie in an excessive admiration for small hands and feet, a tall lithe figure, large dark eyes, and dark silken braided hair. All these the Countess possessed, and she had, moreover, a delicately-formed nose, the least bit curved, and a clear brunette complexion. Her mouth it must be admitted, receded too much from her nose and chin and to a prophetic eye threatened ‘nut-crackers’ in advanced age. But by the light of fire and wax candles that age seemed very far off indeed, and you would have said that the Countess was not more than thirty.

George Eliot
Scenes of Clerical Life

Grandfather was tacitly admitted to be Peter's property. He had no proprietary interest in the umbrella. Mary never ventured to touch Grandfather, and Peter had not been known to place his hands upon the umbrella. Primitive people like to take their possessions about with them, that they may show others how well off they are. A little servant girl goes out to the revel smothered with all her wearing apparel, winter things on top of summer things, regardless of season, and with all the cut glass in rolled-gold settings stuck about her that she can lay her hands on. Two sisters are able to present a fine show by going out in turn. Annie ventures forth clad with all the property in common, while Bessie stays at home, not much better draped than a Greek statue. Mary took her umbrella about, not because she wanted it, but to convince strangers that she owned something to be proud of. Nobody was jealous. She could have left the umbrella anywhere, and not a soul would have touched it. Peter would have taken Grandfather about with him had it been possible; but as the clock was twice Peter's size, and could not be attached to a brass chain and slung in his waistcoat pocket, it had to remain in Number One, Hut-Circles, and wheeze away the hours in solitude.

From dawn of a day already warmed by wafts of hot air, women had set themselves to walk up what is called "the heights of Alsheim," the region where the cultivated land, hollowed like a bow, will bear hops. Some hundreds of yards from the border of the forest high poles in battle array bore up the green tendrils. They looked like very pointed tents of foliage, or belfries--for the millions of little cones, formed of green scales sprinkled with pollen, swung themselves from the extreme top to the ground like bells whose ringer is the wind. All the inhabitants know the event of the day--one picks hops for M. Bastian. The master, up before dawn, was already in the hop-field, examining each foot, calculating the value of his crop, pressing and crushing in his fingers one of the little muslin-like pine cones whose perfume attracts the bees. At the back on the stubble furrows are two narrow wagons, harnessed to a horse, waiting for the harvest, and near them was Ramspacher the farmer, his two sons Augustin and Franois, and a farm servant. The women, on the direct road leading up there, came up in irregular bands, three in file, then five abreast, then one following the others, the only one who was old. Each one had put on a working dress of some thin stuff, discoloured and the worse for wear, except, however, the grocer's daughter, Ida, who wore a nearly new dress, blue with white spots, and another elegant girl from Alsheim, Juliette, a brunette, the daughter of the sacristan, and she had a fashionable bodice and

Ren Bazin
The Children of Alsace

It was a pretty morning, two weeks after Julia's Dance; and blue and lavender shadows, frayed with mid-summer sunshine, waggled gayly across the grass beneath the trees of the tiny orchard, but trembled with timidity as they hurried over the abnormal surfaces of Mrs. Silver as she sat upon the steps of the "back porch." Her right hand held in security one end of a leather leash; the other end of the leash was fastened to a new collar about the neck of an odd and fascinating dog. Seated upon the brick walk at her feet, he was regarding her with a gravity that seemed to discomfort her. She was unable to meet his gaze, and constantly averted her own whenever it furtively descended to his. In fact, her expression and manner were singular, denoting embarrassment, personal hatred, and a subtle bedazzlement. She could not look at him, yet could not keep herself from looking at him. There was something here that arose out of the depths of natural character; it was intrinsic in the two personalities, that is to say; and was in addition to the bitterness consequent upon a public experience, just past, which had been brought upon Mrs. Silver partly by the dog's appearance (in particular the style and colour of his hair) and partly by his unprecedented actions in her company upon the highway.

Booth Tarkington
Gentle Julia

In the evening we went to the french opera, which was very crowded. The boxes were adorned with genteel people, and many beautiful young women. The theatre is very large, elegant, and handsome, and the players were good. I was struck with the ridiculous antics, and gestures of the chef in the orchestra, a man whose office it is to beat time to the musicians. In the municipality box which was in the centre, lined with green silk, and gold, were two fine young women who appeared to be ladies of fashion, and consequence; they were dressed after the antique, in an attire which, for lightness, and scantiness I never saw equalled, till I saw it surpassed at Paris. They appeared to be clothed only in jewels, and a little muslin, very gracefully disposed, the latter, to borrow a beautiful expression, had the appearance of "woven air."--From emotions of gratitude, for the captivating display which they made, I could not help offering a few fervent wishes, that the light of the next day might find them preserved from the dreaded consequences of a very bitter cold night.

John Carr
The Stranger in France

The fire was burning redly in the hall, though the lamps were out, when I ensconced myself in a deep chair behind a deerhide screen quaintly embroidered by Indian women. The cigar was a good one, and I had much to think about; so it was not until a shaft of light streamed athwart the screen that, looking round it, I noticed that Lucille Haldane, carrying a candle, had entered the long room. She set it down on a table, and stood still, glancing about her, while I effaced myself behind the screen. The girl had cast her hair loose, and it rippled in glossy masses from her shoulders to the delicate inward curve of her waist, setting forth the lithe shapeliness of her figure. Concluding that she would withdraw as soon as she was satisfied that all was safe, I decided it would be better if she remained unaware of my presence, and hoped that Cotton would delay his coming. To judge by the soft footsteps, she was returning, when a sudden coldness chilled the room. The light grew uncertain, as though the candle flickered in a draught, and a door I had not previously noticed opened noiselessly.

Harold Bindloss
The Mistress of Bonaventure

He felt again, as he had felt when he saw her in the Newberrys' box, that she was lovely not only with the hesitant possibilities of girlhood at pause before the door of maturity, but because she gleamed with the gleam of an approaching summer night scented and starred. He noted how the yellow rays from a high candelabrum standing near the couch cast what might be an aureole about her head and set it in relief against the distant, drawn curtains, the curtains of ivory plush, which shut the heaven of this drawing-room from the earth of everywhere else. In his every early adventure among the dreams of love, this lonely man of the desert, reacting on his environment, had been less annoyed by the demands of a body that clamoured in vain than by the dictates of a soul that insisted upon the perfection of beauty among beautiful surroundings beautifully encountered. Now he was to put into action forces that would either realise or break those dreams, and, knowing that, he imprinted on his memory this picture of her and always after remembered it: her white hands clasped about the great bunch of violets he had brought to her, the glory of her wayward hair, the curve of her throat, her dark eyes with their curving lashes, her parted lips.

Reginald Wright Kauffman
Running Sands

‘Good morning, Mamsey! why, you’re looking as fresh as a daisy this morning. You’re getting young again’, said Mr. Dempster, looking up from his newspaper when the little old lady entered. A very little old lady she was, with a pale, scarcely wrinkled face, hair of that peculiar white which tells that the locks have once been blond, a natty pure white cap on her head, and a white shawl pinned over her shoulders. You saw at a glance that she had been a mignonne blonde, strangely unlike her tall, ugly, dingy-complexioned son; unlike her daughter-in-law, too, whose large-featured brunette beauty seemed always thrown into higher relief by the white presence of little Mamsey. The unlikeness between Janet and her mother-in-law went deeper than outline and complexion, and indeed there was little sympathy between them, for old Mrs. Dempster had not yet learned to believe that her son, Robert, would have gone wrong if he had married the right woman--a meek woman like herself, who would have borne him children, and been a deft, orderly housekeeper. In spite of Janet’s tenderness and attention to her, she had had little love for her daughter-in-law from the first, and had witnessed the sad growth of home-misery through long years, always with a disposition to lay the blame on the wife rather than on the husband, and to reproach Mrs. Raynor for encouraging her daughter’s faults by a too exclusive sympathy. But old Mrs. Dempster had that rare gift of silence and passivity which often supplies the absence of mental strength; and, whatever were her thoughts,

George Eliot
Scenes of Clerical Life

The door of the little log shanty stood open, revealing a bare, spotless room with whitewashed walls.  There were a couple of old chairs and a rough bench scrubbed a beautiful white like the floor; a curtain of coarse muslin, white and glistening, draped the little window, and a picture of Bobby Burns in a frame made from the shells of Lake Oro, and another of the youthful Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort in a frame ingeniously wrought from pine cones hung on the wall.  A tall cupboard and an old clock with its long hanging weights looked quite familiar and home-like to Scotty.  But over in the corner by the window was a sight that struck him painfully and made him draw back.  An old four-post bed stood against the log wall and in it lay the shrivelled little figure of Kirsty's mother propped up with pillows.  She was bent and twisted with rheumatism, like a little old tree that had been battered by storms.  But her face was brave and bright, and from it shone a pair of brown eyes with a pathetic inquiry in them as of a dumb, uncomprehending creature in pain.  She wore a stiff white cap on her thin grey hair, a snowy mutch covered her poor crooked shoulders, and everything about her was beautifully neat and clean, showing her daughter's loving care.

Marian Keith
The Silver Maple