Surely the mothers of marriageable sons knew of her existence, of her fortune, of the titles she held in her own right and could confer upon her husband and leave to her children.

It was not natural that no one should wish to marry her, that no mother should desire such an heiress for her son.
With the distrustful introspection of maiden youth, she suddenly asked herself whether by any possibility she were different from other girls and whether she had not some strange defect, physical or mental, of which the existence had been most carefully concealed from her all her life.

In the quick impulse she rose and brought all the burning candles to the toilet table, and lighted others, and stood before the mirror, in the yellow light, gazing most critically at her own reflexion.

She looked long and earnestly and quite without vanity.

She told herself, cataloguing her looks, that her hair was neither black nor brown, but that it was very thick and long and waved naturally; that her eyes were very dark, with queer little angles just above the lids, under the prominent brows; that her nose, seen in full face, looked very straight and rather small, though she had been told by the girls in the convent that it was aquiline and pointed; that her cheeks were thin and almost colourless; that her chin was round and smooth and prominent, her lips rather dark than red, and modelled in a high curve; that her ears were very small--she threw back the heavy hair to see them better, turning her face sideways to the glass; that her throat was over-slender, and her neck and arms far too thin for beauty, but with a young leanness which might improve with time, though nothing could ever make them white.