To catalogue in dry matter-of-fact fashion, the face possessed dark brown eyes, bright brown hair, and red, ripe lips; but no catalogue can give the spirit of the face, no description convey an idea of the swift and eloquent play of expression which, like a flash of sunlight, lit up eyes and lips.
Beautiful! The word is hackneyed and worn out. Here was a face more than beautiful, it was soulful. Like the still pool in the heart of a wood, it mirrored the emotion of the heart as faithfully as a glass would reflect the face. Like a glass--joy, sorrow, pleasure, mirth, were reflected in the eloquent eyes and mobile lips.
Of concealment the face was entirely ignorant; no bird of the forest in which she lived could be more frank, innocent of guile, and ignorant of evil.
With her light summer cloak held round her graceful figure, she stood in the doorway, a picture of grace and youthful beauty.
For a moment she stood silent, looking from the woodman to his wife questioningly, then she came into the room and threw the hood back, revealing a shapely head, shining, bronze-like, in the light of the lamp.
"Did you send Dick for me, father?" she said, and her voice, like her face, betokened a refinement uncommon in a woodman's daughter. "I was not far off, only at the pool to hear the frogs' concert. Dick knows where to find me now, he comes straight to the pond, though he hates frogs' music; don't you, Dick?"
The dog rubbed his nose against her hand and wagged his tail, and the girl took her seat at the table.
To match face and voice, her mien and movements were graceful, and she handled the dinner-napkin like--a lady. It was just that, expressed in a word. The girl was not only beautiful--but a lady, in appearance, in tone, in bearing--and that, notwithstanding she wore a plain cotton gown in a woodman's hut, and called the woodman "father."
"You did not come by your usual path, father," she said, turning from the deerhound, who sat on his haunches and rested his nose in her lap, quite content if her hand touched his head, say once during the meal.
"No, Una," he replied, and though he called her by her Christian name, and without any prefix there was a subtle undertone in his voice and in his manner of addressing her, which seemed to infer something like respect. "No, I went astray."