For the eyes seemed to promise a character, a career; whereas the rest of the face was no more, perhaps, than a piece of agreeable pink-and-white.
She wore a dress of dark-blue cotton, showing the spring of her beautiful throat.

The plain gown with its long folds, the uncovered throat, and rich simplicity of her fair hair had often reminded Fenwick and a few of his patrons of those Florentine photographs which now, since the spread of the later Pre-Raphaelites and the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery, were to be seen even in the shops of country towns.

There was a literary gentleman in Kendal who said that Mrs.
Fenwick was like one of Ghirlandajo's tall women in Santa Maria Novella.

Phoebe had sometimes listened uncomfortably to these comparisons.

She was a Cumberland girl, and had no wish at all to be like people in Italy.