She walked up to the dressing-table, which was covered with a disorderly medley of a young lady’s toilet articles—­comb and brush, a paper of pins, ribbons, a brooch, little vase for rings, an open purse, a soiled handkerchief—­and began mechanically to undo her hair, and shake out the braids.  It was dark-brown hair, not soft and delicately fine like Sophie’s, but vigorous and crisp, each hair seeming to be distinct, and yet harmonizing with the rest.  As it was loosened and fell voluminously spreading over her shoulders, she paused, resting against the table, and looked at her face in the glass with critical earnestness.  The candle, standing at one side of the mirror, cast soft and deep shadows beneath the darkly-defined eyebrows, and against the straight line of the nose, and around the clear, short curves of the mouth and upper lip.  The light rested tenderly on her firm, oval cheeks, so deep-toned, yet pale, and brought out an almost invisible dimple on each cheek-bone beneath the eye, usually only to be distinguished when she laughed or smiled.  The forehead, so far as it could be seen beneath the hair, was smooth and straight, neither high nor especially wide.  The ears were small and white, but rather too much cut away below to be in perfect proportion.  Over all seemed spread a mellow, rich, transparent, laughing medium, that was better than beauty, and without which beauty would have seemed cold and tame, or at least passionless.  There was a delicate mystery in the face, too, not conscious or self-woven, but of that impalpable and involuntary sort which sometimes looks from the eyes of young unmarried women, whose natures have developed sweetly and freely, without warping or forcing.  It has nothing to do with religion, nor with what we commonly understand by spirit.  It is not to be described or analyzed; like the blue of heaven, it is the infinitely elusive property which is the very secret and necessity of its existence.

Cornelia looked searchingly at this face, and, though much of its subtlest charm must necessarily have been lost upon her, she saw a great deal that gave her pleasure.  She had never been subjected to that awakening but coarsening process which teaches a girl to call herself a beauty; but there is a certain amount of instinctive perception, in these matters, and she could not but know that what had virtue to gratify her would not lack in effect over others.  Nor was she in the habit of taking stock of herself in the looking-glass; only to-night she seemed to have an especial motive in making or renewing her own acquaintance.

At length she dropped her eyes, and, with nimble fingers and swiftly-applied hair-pins, wound up her hair into its nocturnal knot.  She removed her ear-rings and rings, and put them into the vase; but here reverie overtook her once more, and held her in a meditative half-smile, until consciousness revived, and startled the blood into her cheeks.  She walked over to her little sofa, with dispatch and business in her step, and sat down to unlace her boots.