Page 104 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

Chapter 9

The two Misses Molyneux, this nobleman’s sisters, came
presently to call upon her, and Isabel took a fancy to the
young ladies, who appeared to her to show a most original
stamp. It is true that when she described them to her cousin
by that term he declared that no epithet could be less ap-
plicable than this to the two Misses Molyneux, since there
were fifty thousand young women in England who exact-
ly resembled them. Deprived of this advantage, however,
Isabel’s visitors retained that of an extreme sweetness and
shyness of demeanour, and of having, as she thought, eyes
like the balanced basins, the circles of ‘ornamental water,’
set, in parterres, among the geraniums.
‘They’re not morbid, at any rate, whatever they are,’ our
heroine said to herself; and she deemed this a great charm,
for two or three of the friends of her girlhood had been re-
grettably open to the charge (they would have been so nice
without it), to say nothing of Isabel’s having occasionally
suspected it as a tendency of her own. The Misses Moly-
neux were not in their first youth, but they had bright, fresh
complexions and something of the smile of childhood. Yes,
their eyes, which Isabel admired, were round, quiet and
contented, and their figures, also of a generous roundness,
were encased in sealskin jackets. Their friendliness was
great, so great that they were almost embarrassed to show

104 The Portrait of a Lady