As they approached, a footman came swiftly down the steps, opened the door of the car, and bowed, and in another moment, led by the man, they had entered the hall and were being escorted into the great salon where their hostess was awaiting them.
La Marquise de Mornaye was a woman of about sixty, but from the energy and vigour of her appearance she seemed to be in the very prime of life. She was an extraordinary figure of a woman, as tall and strong-looking as a man, with a personal quality that was almost mountainously impressive in its command. The image of the boy’s recent discontent had so shaped the French as a dark and swarthy people of mean stature that it was now startling to be confronted by a woman of this grand proportion.
She had a wide, round face, smooth, brown and unwrinkled, such as one often finds in peasant people; her eyes were round, bright, and shrewd, webbed minutely by fine wrinkles at the corners. She had strong, coarse hair of grey, brushed vigorously back from a wide, low forehead. She was big in foot and limb and body, everything about the woman was strong, large and vigorous except her hands. And her hands were plump, white, tiny, as useless-looking as a baby’s, shockingly disproportionate to the power and vigour of the rest of her big frame.
The woman had on a long, brown dress that completely covered her from neck to toe: it was a strangely old-fashioned garment—or, rather, it did not seem to have any fashion or style whatsoever—but it was, nevertheless, a magnificent garment, in its plain and homely strength perfectly appropriate to the extraordinary woman who wore it.
In every respect—in word, tone, gesture, look, and act—the woman showed a plain, forceful, and immensely able character. Her strong, brown face was friendly, yet shrewd and knowing; she greeted the Countess cordially, but it was evident from the humour in her round, bright eyes that she was no fool in the ways of the world and perfectly able to hold her own in any worldly encounter.
She was waiting for them, erect and smiling, as they entered the great salon, a magnificent room at least forty feet in length, warmly, luxuriously, yet plainly furnished, and with nothing cold or repellent in its grand proportions. She greeted the Countess immediately and cordially, extending her plump little white hand in a friendly greeting, and bending and kissing the little wren-like woman on her withered cheek. La Marquise, in deference to her young American guest, spoke English from the beginning. And her English, like everything else about her, was plain,
