Violante was tall and slender, but her figure was not graceful.
People did not say of her that she was slender; they said she was
thin. And that was incontestably true. She was very thin. But her
shoulders were high and square, and there was a sort of angularity
and harshness about all the lines of her person. Her head seemed
somewhat too large for her body; and the upper part of it seemed too
large for the lower portion. She had a large, square forehead, white
enough, but strongly marked with inequalities of surface, which,
however much they might have delighted a phrenologist, were not
conducive to girlish comeliness. Her hair was of the very light
reddish quality, which has not a single touch in it of that rich
sunny auburn, which makes so many heads charming, red though they
be. Her face was perfectly white, yet not clear of complexion. And
the pale grey eyes beneath their all but colourless brows completed
the impression of a general want of vigour and vitality.
A little before the end of that year in which the Ravenna impresario
performed his memorable journey to Milan with the results that have
been recorded, Violante di Marliani reached her twenty-third
birthday; a few months before that day the Marchese Ludovico had
reached his twenty-second. It was a difference on the wrong side,
but not so great as to form any serious objection to the proposed
match.
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