Trouble
had prematurely faded the old lady's face, formerly handsome, no
doubt; nothing was left but the more prominent features, the
outline, in a word, the skeleton of a countenance of which the
whole effect indicated great shrewdness with much grace in the
play of the eyes, in which could be discerned the expression
peculiar to women of the old Court; an expression that cannot be
defined in words. Those fine and mobile features might quite as
well indicate bad feelings, and suggest astuteness and womanly
artifice carried to a high pitch of wickedness, as reveal the
refined delicacy of a beautiful soul.
Indeed, the face of a woman has this element of mystery to puzzle
the ordinary observer, that the difference between frankness and
duplicity, the genius for intrigue and the genius of the heart,
is there inscrutable. A man gifted with the penetrating eye can
read the intangible shade of difference produced by a more or
less curved line, a more or less deep dimple, a more or less
prominent feature. The appreciation of these indications lies
entirely in the domain of intuition; this alone can lead to the
discovery of what everyone is interested in concealing. The old
lady's face was like the room she inhabited; it seemed as
difficult to detect whether this squalor covered vice or the
highest virtue, as to decide whether Adelaide's mother was an old
coquette accustomed to weigh, to calculate, to sell everything,
or a loving woman, full of noble feeling and amiable qualities.
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