And never, in all his dreams, had any face appeared before him which bore so rare and radiant a beauty as this one of the mysterious stranger whom he had rescued. The complexion was of a rich olive, and still kept its hue where another would have been changed to the pallor of death; the closed eyes were fringed with long heavy lashes; the eyebrows were thin, and loftily arched; the hair was full of waves and undulations, black as night, gleaming with its jetty gloss in the sun's rays, and in its disorder falling in rich luxuriant masses over the arms and the shoulder of him who supported her. The features were exquisitely beautiful; her nose a slight departure from the Grecian; her lips small and exquisitely shapen; her chin rounded faultlessly. The face was thinner than it might have been, like the face of youth and beauty in the midst of sorrow; but the thinness was not emaciation; it had but refined and spiritualized those matchless outlines, giving to them not the voluptuous beauty of the Greek ideal, but rather the angelic or saintly beauty of the medieval. She was young too, and the bloom and freshness of youth were there beneath all the sorrow and the grief. More than this, the refined grace of that face, the nobility of those features, the stamp of high breeding which was visible in every lineament, showed at once that she could be no common person. This was no fisherman's wife--no peasant girl, but some one of high rank and breeding--some one whose dress proclaimed her station, even if her features had told him nothing.
"My God!" exclaimed Windham, in bewilderment. "Who is she? How came she here? What is the meaning of it?"
But there was no time to be lost in wonder or in vague conjectures. The girl was senseless. It was necessary at once to put her under careful treatment. For a moment Windham lingered, gazing upon that sad and exquisite face; and then raising her in his arms, he went back to the boat. "Give way, lads!" he cried; and the sailors, who saw it all, pulled with a will. They were soon back again. The senseless one was lifted into the steamer. Windham carried her in his own arms to the cabin, and placed her tenderly in a berth, and committed her to the care of the stewardess. Then he waited impatiently for news of her recovery.