The two elder sisters were very ordinary young ladies, such as one is sure to find in every ball-room. They were neither pretty nor ugly; their manners conventional, their conversation flat and insipid. When talking to one they appeared to be thinking of something else, and their answers were generally in monosyllables.
The youngest daughter, however, differed much from her two eldest sisters, both in mind and in features; so much so, indeed, that I imagined for some time that she must be their step-sister, but this was not the case, as I found out afterwards. Maud--that was the name of the younger--was by far the cleverest really of the whole family, and yet she was looked upon as a ninny by the rest. She had more originality in her than either of her two sisters, as I soon observed from her remarks; but she was also more retired, and preferred to hide her light, as it were, under a bushel. It was only now and then that I could catch a glimpse of it, but when I did so it was most brilliant.
Without being strikingly beautiful, her face had that in it that captivates more than mere beauty. The expression was ingenuous and pensive, at times melancholy. When in society she never seemed like one of the herd, or to take the slightest interest in what was going on. She went through her dancing mechanically, and always seemed in the clouds, or, as her sisters would say, "wool-gathering."
It was easy to see from the first that no very sister-like feeling existed between the two elder sisters and their younger one. Even the parents preferred their two elder girls to their youngest daughter.
The fact was that they--none of them--understood her; she was not of their order, and they set her down as rather wanting. If she was scolded for anything and she bore the rebuke with patience, this was set down to indifference and want of feeling, when my own experience of her character was that she was the most sensitive creature that I had ever met with. If, as was often the case, she fell into a reverie in company, it was called sulkiness, and if when asked to perform on the piano, she meekly obeyed in a sort of languid manner peculiar to herself, it was called unwillingness to oblige; yet when at the instrument her touch was so soft and full of feeling, her voice so clear and modulating, that it seemed as if her whole soul was poured forth in the piece.