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smile, and the smile itself was not so frequent but that it provoked a
desire to summon it to her lips again. It had a way of hesitating, as
though Sylvia were not sure whether she would smile or not; and when she
had made up her mind, it dimpled her cheeks and transfigured her whole
face, and revealed in her tenderness and a sense of humor. Her complexion
was pale, but clear, her figure was slender and active, but without
angularities, and she was of the middle height. Yet the quality which the
eye first remarked in her was not so much her beauty, as a certain
purity, a look almost of the Madonna, a certainty, one might say, that
even in the circle in which she moved, she had kept herself unspotted
from the world.

Thus she looked as she sat by the carriage window. But as the train drew
near to Ambérieu, the air brightened and the sunlight ministered to her
beauty like a careful handmaid, touching her pale cheeks to a rosy
warmth, giving a luster to her hair, and humaning her to a smile. Sylvia
sat forward a little, as though to meet the sunlight, then she turned
toward the carriage and saw her mother's eyes intently watching her.


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