His eyes were fixed
steadily on the dark girl, every movement of whom he seemed to follow.
She was, indeed, an apparition of wild beauty, so unlike the girls
about her that it seemed nothing more than natural, that, when she
moved, the groups should part to let her pass through them, and that
she should carry the centre of all looks and thoughts with her. She was
dressed to please her own fancy, evidently, with small regard to the
modes declared correct by the Rockland milliners and mantua-makers. Her
heavy black hair lay in a braided coil, with a long gold pin shot
through it like a javelin. Round her neck was a golden _torque_, a
round, cord-like chain, such as the Gauls used to wear: the "Dying
Gladiator" has it. Her dress was a grayish watered silk; her collar was
pinned with a flashing diamond brooch, the stones looking as fresh as
morning dew-drops, but the silver setting of the past generation; her
arms were bare, round, but slender rather than large, in keeping with
her lithe round figure. On her wrists she wore bracelets: one was a
circlet of enamelled scales; the other looked as if it might have been
Cleopatra's asp, with its body turned to gold and its eyes to emeralds.
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