The young girl in question gave the female she had been expecting any thing but a cordial or dutiful reception.  In personal appearance there was not a point of resemblance between them, although the tout ensemble of each was singularly striking and remarkable.  The girl’s locks were black as the raven’s wing:  her figure was tall and slender, but elastic and full of symmetry.  The ivory itself was not more white nor glossy than her skin; her teeth were—­bright and beautiful, and her mouth a perfect rosebud.  It is unnecessary to say that her eyes we’re black and brilliant, for such ever belong to her complexion and temperament; but it in necessary to add, that they were piercing and unsettled, and you felt that they looked into you rather than at you or upon you.  In fact, her features were all perfect, yet it often happened that their general expression was productive of no agreeable feeling on the beholder.  Sometimes her smile was sweet as that of an angel, but let a single impulse or whim be checked, and her face assumed a character of malignity that made her beauty appear like that which we dream of in an evil spirit.

The other woman, who stood to her in the relation of step-mother, was above the middle size.  Her hair was sandy, or approaching to a pale red; her features were coarse, but regular; and her whole figure that of a well-made and powerful woman.  In her countenance might be read a peculiar blending of sternness and benignity, each evidently softened down by an expression of melancholy—­perhaps of suffering—­as if some secret care lay brooding at her heart.  The inside of the hovel itself had every mark of poverty and destitution about it.  Two or three stools, a pot or two, one miserable standing bed, and a smaller one gathered up under a rug in the corner, were almost all that met the eye on entering it; and simple as these meagre portions of furniture were, they bore no marks of cleanliness or care.  On the contrary, everything appeared to be neglected, squalid and filthy—­such, precisely, as led one to see at a glance that the inmates of this miserable hut were contented with their wretched state of life, and had no notion whatsoever that any moral or domestic duty existed, by which they might be taught useful notions of personal comfort and self-respect.

“So,” said the young woman, addressing her step-mother, as she entered, “you’re come back at last, an’ a purty time you tuck to stay away!”

“Well,” replied the other, calmly, “I’m here now at any rate; but I see you’re in one of your tantrums, Sally, my lady.  What’s wrong, I say?  In the mean time don’t look as if you’d ait us widout salt.”

“An’ a bitter morsel you’d be,” replied the younger, with a flashing glance—­“divil a more so.  Here am I, sittin’, or running out an’ in, these two hours, when I ought to be at the dance in Kilnahushogue, before I go to Barny Gormly’s wake; for I promised to be at both.  Why didn’t you come home in time?”