La Corriveau, in feature and person, took after her grand-sire
Exili. She was tall and straight, of a swarthy complexion, black-
haired, and intensely black-eyed. She was not uncomely of feature,
nay, had been handsome, nor was her look at first sight forbidding,
especially if she did not turn upon you those small basilisk eyes of
hers, full of fire and glare as the eyes of a rattlesnake. But
truly those thin, cruel lips of hers never smiled spontaneously, or
affected to smile upon you unless she had an object to gain by
assuming a disguise as foreign to her as light to an angel of
darkness.
La Corriveau was dressed in a robe of soft brown stuff, shaped with
a degree of taste and style beyond the garb of her class. Neatness
in dress was the one virtue she had inherited from her mother. Her
feet were small and well-shod, like a lady's, as the envious
neighbors used to say. She never in her life would wear the sabots
of the peasant women, nor go barefoot, as many of them did, about
the house. La Corriveau was vain of her feet, which would have made
her fortune, as she thought with bitterness, anywhere but in St.
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