It was the face of a woman who could, morally
speaking, make mincemeat of nine young men out of ten. But she could not
have made one out of the number love her. For it has been decreed that
women shall win love--except in some happy exceptions--by beauty only.
The same unwritten law has it that a man's appearance does not matter--a
law much appreciated by some of us, and duly canonized by not a few.
The girl was evidently listening. She glanced at a little golden clock
on the mantel-piece, and then at the open window. She rose--she was
short, and somewhat broadly built--and went to the window.
"He will be back," she said to herself, "in a few minutes now."
She raised her hand to her forehead, and pressed back her hair with a
little movement of impatience, expressive, perhaps, of a great suspense.
She stood idly drumming on the window-sill for a few moments; then, with
a quick little sigh, she went back to the piano. As she moved she gave a
jerk of the head from time to time, as schoolgirls who have too much
hair are wont to do. The reason of this nervous movement was a wondrous
plait of gold reaching far below her waist. Catrina Lanovitch almost
worshipped her own hair. She knew without any doubt that not one woman
in ten thousand could rival her in this feminine glory--knew it as
indubitably as she knew that she was plain.
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