"What a magnificent creature!" said he to himself. "Who could believe
that the three years would make such a change!"
And he was right. The tall lithe girl had bloomed into full glory' and
Valencia St. Just, though not delicately beautiful, was as splendid
an Irish damsel as man need look upon, with a grand masque, aquiline
features, luxuriant black hair, and--though it was the fag-end of the
London season--the unrivalled Irish complexion, as of the fair dame of
Kilkenny, whose
"Lips were like roses, her cheeks were the same,
Like a dish of fresh strawberries smother'd in crame."
Her figure was perhaps too tall, and somewhat too stout also; but its
size was relieved by the delicacy of those hands and feet of which
Miss Valencia was most pardonably proud, and by that indescribable
lissomeness and lazy grace which Irishwomen inherit, perhaps, with
their tinge of southern blood; and when, in half an hour, she
reappeared, with broad straw-hat, and gown tucked up _a la bergere_
over the striped Welsh petticoat, perhaps to show off the ankles,
which only looked the finer for a pair of heavy laced boots, Elsley
honestly felt it a pleasure to look at her, and a still greater
pleasure to talk to her, and to be talked to by her; while she, bent
on making herself agreeable, partly from real good taste, partly from
natural good-nature, and partly, too, because she saw in his eyes that
he admired her, chatted sentiment about all heaven and earth.
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