Nellie, too, was well beloved, but he soon grew weary of her
company, for she seldom talked of anything save herself and the
compliments which were given to her youthful beauty. And Nellie, at
the age of eighteen, was beautiful, if that can be called beauty
which is void of heart or soul or intellect. She was very small, and
the profusion of golden curls which fell about her neck and
shoulders gave her the appearance of being younger than she really
was. Her features were almost painfully regular, her complexion
dazzlingly brilliant, while her large blue eyes had in them a
dreamy, languid expression exceedingly attractive to those who
looked for nothing beyond--no inner chamber where dwell the graces
which make a woman what she ought to be. Louis' artist eye,
undeveloped though it was, acknowledged the rare loveliness of
Nellie's face. She would make a beautiful picture, he thought; but
for the noble, the good, the pure, he turned to the dark-eyed Maude,
who was as wholly unlike her stepsister as it was possible for her
to be. The one was a delicate blonde, the other a decided brunette,
with hair and eyes of deepest black. Her complexion, too, was dark,
but tinged with a beautiful red, which Nellie would gladly have
transferred to her own paler cheek. It was around the mouth,
however, the exquisitely shaped mouth, and white even teeth, that
Maude's principal beauty lay, and the bright smile which lit up her
features when at all animated in conversation would have made a
plain face handsome. There were some who gave her the preference,
saying there was far more beauty in her clear, beautiful eyes and
sunny smile than in the dollish face of Nellie, who treated such
remarks with the utmost scorn. She knew that she was beautiful. She
had known it all her life--for had she not been told so by her
mirror, her father, her schoolmates, her Aunt Kelsey, and more than
all by J.C. De Vere, the elegant young man whom she had met in
Rochester, where she had spent the winter preceding the summer of
which we are writing, and which was four and one-half years after
Matty's death.
Greatly had the young lady murmured on her return against the dreary
old house and lonely life at Laurel Hill, which did indeed present a
striking contrast to the city gayeties in which she had been
mingling. Even the cozy little chamber which the kind-hearted Maude
had fitted up for her with her own means was pronounced heathenish
and old-fashioned, while Maude herself was constantly taunted with
being countryfied and odd.