It
was her eyes that did it. At times they had an intensity in
their gaze which made them almost uncanny, something like the
luminous eyes of an animal hungrily fixed on its prey. They
held me, though not because they glittered: I could have gone
away if I had thought proper, and remained to listen only
because the meaning of that singular look in her grey-green
eyes, which came into them whenever I grew restive, had dawned
on my careless mind.
She was an old woman with snow-white hair, which contrasted
rather strangely with her hard red colour; but her skin was
smooth, her face well shaped, with fine acquiline features.
No doubt it had been a very handsome face though never
beautiful, I imagine; it was too strong and firm and resolute;
too like the face of some man we see, which, though we have
but a momentary sight of it in a passing crowd, affects us
like a sudden puff of icy-cold air--the revelation of a
singular and powerful personality. Yet she was only a poor
old broken-down woman in a Wiltshire village, held fast in her
chair by a hopeless infirmity. With her legs paralysed she
was like that prince in the Eastern tale on whom an evil spell
had been cast, turning the lower half of his body into marble.
But she did not, like the prince, shed incessant tears and
lament her miserable destiny with a loud voice. She was
patient and cheerful always, resigned to the will of Heaven,
and--a strange thing this to record of an old woman in a
village!--she would never speak of her ailments.
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