The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) - The UK Mirror Service

THE LOVERS 35
companions, drawing the slender threads with many a graceful
motion from the revolving distaff into the basket by her side, she
might have passed for her, whose proud prayer, that she might [40]
be known not as the daughter of the Scipios but as the mother
of the Gracchi, was but too fatally fulfilled in the death-earned
celebrity of those her boasted jewels.
The other lady was smaller, slighter, fairer, and altogether so
different in mien, complexion, stature, and expression, that it was
difficult even for those who knew them well to believe that they
were a mother and her only child. For even in her flush of beauty,
the elder lady, while in the full splendor of Italian womanhood,
must ever have been calculated to inspire admiration, not all
unmixed with awe, rather than tenderness or love. The daughter,
on the other hand, was one whose every gesture, smile, word,
glance, bespoke that passion latent in itself, which it awakened
in the bosom of all beholders.
Slightly above the middle stature, and with a waist of scarce a
span's circumference, her form was exquisitely full and rounded;
the sweeping outlines of her snow-white and dimpled arms, bare
to the shoulders, and set off by many strings of pearl, which were
themselves scarcely whiter than the skin on which they rested;
the swan-like curvature of the dazzling neck; the wavy and
voluptuous development of her bust, shrouded but not concealed
by the plaits of her white linen stola, fastened on either shoulder
by a clasp of golden fillagree, and gathered just above her hips
by a gilt zone of the Grecian fashion; the small and shapely foot,
which peered out with its jewelled sandal under her gold-fringed
draperies; combined to present to the eye a very incarnation
of that ideal loveliness, which haunts enamored poets in their
dreams, the girl just bursting out of girlhood, the glowing Hebe
of the soft and sunny south. But if her form was lovely, how
shall the pen of mortal describe the wild romantic beauty of her
soul-speaking features. The rich redundancy of her dark auburn
hair, black where the shadows rested on it as the sable locks of