Thus quaintly self-contradictory in the upper part of her face, she was hardly less at variance with established ideas of harmony in the lower.  Her lips had the true feminine delicacy of form, her cheeks the lovely roundness and smoothness of youth—­but the mouth was too large and firm, the chin too square and massive for her sex and age.  Her complexion partook of the pure monotony of tint which characterized her hair—­it was of the same soft, warm, creamy fairness all over, without a tinge of color in the cheeks, except on occasions of unusual bodily exertion or sudden mental disturbance.  The whole countenance—­so remarkable in its strongly opposed characteristics—­was rendered additionally striking by its extraordinary mobility.  The large, electric, light-gray eyes were hardly ever in repose; all varieties of expression followed each other over the plastic, ever-changing face, with a giddy rapidity which left sober analysis far behind in the race.  The girl’s exuberant vitality asserted itself all over her, from head to foot.  Her figure—­taller than her sister’s, taller than the average of woman’s height; instinct with such a seductive, serpentine suppleness, so lightly and playfully graceful, that its movements suggested, not unnaturally, the movements of a young cat—­her figure was so perfectly developed already that no one who saw her could have supposed that she was only eighteen.  She bloomed in the full physical maturity of twenty years or more—­bloomed naturally and irresistibly, in right of her matchless health and strength.  Here, in truth, lay the mainspring of this strangely-constituted organization.  Her headlong course down the house stairs; the brisk activity of all her movements; the incessant sparkle of expression in her face; the enticing gayety which took the hearts of the quietest people by storm—­even the reckless delight in bright colors which showed itself in her brilliantly-striped morning dress, in her fluttering ribbons, in the large scarlet rosettes on her smart little shoes—­all sprang alike from the same source; from the overflowing physical health which strengthened every muscle, braced every nerve, and set the warm young blood tingling through her veins, like the blood of a growing child.

On her entry into the breakfast-room, she was saluted with the customary remonstrance which her flighty disregard of all punctuality habitually provoked from the long-suffering household authorities.  In Miss Garth’s favorite phrase, “Magdalen was born with all the senses—­except a sense of order.”

Magdalen!  It was a strange name to have given her?  Strange, indeed; and yet, chosen under no extraordinary circumstances.  The name had been borne by one of Mr. Vanstone’s sisters, who had died in early youth; and, in affectionate remembrance of her, he had called his second daughter by it—­just as he had called his eldest daughter Norah, for his wife’s sake.  Magdalen!  Surely, the grand old Bible name—­suggestive of a sad and somber dignity; recalling, in its first association, mournful ideas of penitence and seclusion—­had been here, as events had turned out, inappropriately bestowed?  Surely, this self-contradictory girl had perversely accomplished one contradiction more, by developing into a character which was out of all harmony with her own Christian name!