Elizabeth's eyes were also grey, but
it was a cold washed-out grey like that of a February sky. And so with
feature after feature, and with the expression also. Beatrice's was
noble and open, if at times defiant. Looking at her you knew that she
might be a mistaken woman, or a headstrong woman, or both, but she
could never be a mean woman. Whichever of the ten commandments she might
choose to break, it would not be that which forbids us to bear false
witness against our neighbour. Anybody might read it in her eyes. But in
her sister's, he might discern her father's shifty hardness watered by
woman's weaker will into something like cunning. For the rest Elizabeth
had a very fair figure, but lacked her sister's rounded loveliness,
though the two were so curiously alike that at a distance you might well
mistake the one for the other. One might almost fancy that nature had
experimented upon Elizabeth before she made up her mind to produce
Beatrice, just to get the lines and distances. The elder sister was
to the other what the pale unfinished model of clay is to the polished
statue in ivory and gold.
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