Yvonne

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Miss Marie was a rather elderly lady, indeed above forty years of age. She was tall, meager, and somewhat large, her haunches and back parts were well developed and her breasts properly separated but not too prominent. Her glowing auburn hair was combed tightly off her ample forehead and gathered to a knot at the back of her head. Her conduct was extremely correct and modest, her large dark eyes, of undeterminable colour, were generally gazing preoccupied into the space or looking virtuously down before her, but at times, when hidden behind the thin, almost transparent lids, they sent forth sparkling, golden flashes, which betrayed the fire brewing under her modest and chaste surface.

For about a fortnight Marie had been the governess of Yvonne, a father and motherless girl, living with her old infirm grandfather.

Yvonne was an insignificant brunette, neither pretty, nor ugly; she was short, plump, pale, with big brown eyes in an oval face, surrounded by darkbrown lustreless hair. She was rather slow in her movements and decidedly slow in learning; her ignorance had became almost a proverb at the convent, in which she had received her education. I do not want to know all that, “I'll take a learned husband,” thus was her answer, whenever she was called upon to do some intellectual work. Nor did she like hand-work, she knew scarcely how to manage a needle, but nobody was more clever than she, when the question was, how to dress one's head or how to form one's hair into natural curls, and nobody had fingers more apt for tying a knot or arranging a bow.

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