VANITY FAIR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 242, 13 October 1931, Page 2

VANITY FAIR

MISTRESS BEATRIX.

This laughing colloquy) took place in the hall of Walcote House, in the midst of which is a staircase that leads from an open gallery, where are the doors of the sleeping chambers; and from one of these, a wax candle in her hand, and illuminating her, came Mistress Beatrix—the light falling indeed upon the scarlet ribbon which she wore, and upon the most brilliant white neck in the world. Esmond had left a child and found a Woman, grown beyond the common height, and arrived al such a dazzling completeness of beauty that his eyes might well show surprise and delight at beholding her. In hers there was a brightness so lustrous and melting that I have seen a whole assembly follow her as if by an attraction irresistible; and that night the great duke Bias at the playhouse after Ramillies, every soul turned and looked (she chanced to enter at the opposite side of the theatre at the some moment) at her, and not at him. She was a brown beauty, that is, her eyes, hair, and eyebrows and eyelashes mere dark, her hair curling with rich undulations and waving over her shoulders, but her complexion was as dazzling white as snow in sunshine, except her cheeks, which were a bright red, and her lips, which were of a still deeper crimson. Her mouth and chin, they said. Were too large and full, and so they might be for a goddess in marble, but not for a woman whose cites were fire, whose look was love, whose voice was the sweetest low song, whose shape was perfect symmetry, health, decision, activity, whose foot as it planted itself on the ground was firm but flexible, ana whose motion, whether rapid or slow, was always perfect grace —agile as a nymph, lofty as a queen—now melting, now imperious, now sarcastic—there was no single movement of hers but was beautiful. As he thinks of her, he who writes feels young again and remembers a paragon. So she came holding her dress with one fair rounded arm, and her taper before her, tripping down the stair to greet Esmond.—William Makepeace Thackeray, in "The History of Henry Esmond, Esq.”