Volume Ii Part 12 (1/2)
”Yes ? what is it you look for in a face?” said Mrs. Evelyn.
”Let us hear whether America has any chance,” said Mr. Thorn, who had joined the group, and placed himself precisely so as to hinder Fleda's view.
”My fancy has no stamp of nationality, in this, at least,” he said, pleasantly.
”Now, for instance, the Miss Delancys ? don't you call them handsome, Mr. Carleton?” said Florence.
”Yes,” he said, half smiling.
”But not beautiful? Now, what is it they want?”
”I do not wish, if I could, to make the want visible to other eyes than my own.”
”Well, Cornelia Schenck ? how do you like her face?”
”It is very pretty-featured.”
”Pretty-featured! Why, she is called beautiful! She has a beautiful smile, Mr. Carleton!”
”She has only one.”
”Only one! and how many smiles ought the same person to have?”
cried Florence, impatiently. But that which instantly answered her said forcibly, that a plurality of them was possible.
”I have seen one face,” he said, gravely, and his eye seeking the floor, ”that had, I think, a thousand.”
”Different smiles!” said Mrs. Evelyn, in a constrained voice.
”If they were not all absolutely that, they had so much of freshness and variety that they all seemed new.”
”Was the mouth so beautiful?” said Florence.
”Perhaps it would not have been remarked for beauty when it was perfectly at rest, but it could not move with the least play of feeling, grave or gay, that it did not become so in a very high degree. I think there was no touch or shade of sentiment in the mind that the lips did not give with singular nicety; and the mind was one of the most finely wrought I have ever known.”
”And what other features went with this mouth?” said Florence.
”The usual complement, I suppose,” said Thorn. ” '_Item_, two lips indifferent red; _item_, two gray eyes, with lids to them; _item_, one neck, one chin, and so forth.”
”Mr. Carleton, Sir,” said Mrs. Evelyn, blandly,” as Mr. Evelyn says, women may be forgiven for wondering, wont you answer Florence's question?”
”Mr. Thorn has done it, Mrs. Evelyn, for me.”
”But I have great doubts of the correctness of Mr. Thorn's description, Sir; wont you indulge us with yours?”
”Word-painting is a difficult matter, Mrs. Evelyn, in some instances; if I must do it, I will borrow my colours. In general, 'that which made her fairness much the fairer was, that it was but an amba.s.sador of a most fair mind.' ”
”A most exquisite picture!” said Thorn; ”and the originals don't stand so thick that one is in any danger of mistaking them. Is the painter Shakespeare? ? I don't recollect.”
”I think Sidney, Sir; I am not sure.”