March decided that she had been some time
a widow; and he easily divined that the young couple on her right had
been so little time husband and wife that they would rather not have it
known. Next them was a young lady whom he did not at first think so
good-looking as she proved later to be, though she had at once a pretty
nose, with a slight upward slant at the point, long eyes under fallen
lashes, a straight forehead, not too high, and a mouth which perhaps the
exigencies of breakfasting did not allow all its characteristic charm.
She had what Mrs. March thought interesting hair, of a dull black,
roughly rolled away from her forehead and temples in a fashion not
particularly becoming to her, and she had the air of not looking so well
as she might if she had chosen. The elderly man on her right, it was easy
to see, was her father; they had a family likeness, though his fair hair,
now ashen with age, was so different from hers. He wore his beard cut in
the fashion of the Second Empire, with a Louis Napoleonic mustache,
imperial, and chin tuft; his neat head was cropt close; and there was
something Gallic in its effect and something remotely military: he had
blue eyes, really less severe than he meant, though be frowned a good
deal, and managed them with glances of a staccato quickness, as if
challenging a potential disagreement with his opinions.
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