Love is Eternal

Előszó

Book I
YOUTH IS THE SEED TIME
1
SHE leaned across her dressing table and gazed into the gilt-framed mirror on the wall. Strange, she thought, how much time you can spend studying your own face, and then scarcely know it. Her nose, at least, never altered: it was short and straight: but everything else seemed to change with her mood. Her upper lip was thin, almost prim, her lower lip full and sensual; the lock she combed across the massive brow was blond but the rest of her hair, which feil in waves below her shoulders, was chestnut. Her eyes were large, wide-set, deep blue, clear and penetrat-ing in their outward gaze though not always lucid within; tonight she was happy, and the intruder who sometimes lurked behind them was nowhere to be seen.
She feit herself under scrutiny, looked up into the right-hand corner of her mirror and caught her fifteen-year-old sister Anns eyes upon her.
"For a girl who's a prude with the boys," Ann commented in her high voice, "you're displaying what Ma calis an unconscionable amount of bosom."
Mary gazed down at the rich blue Afrique silk; she had designed the gown herseif, low off the shoulders, the short püffed sleeves overlaid with needlepoint. People rarely said she had a beautiful face, though they often said she was Iovely; but no one disputed that she had the most exquisite shoulders and arms in Lexington, with no bones or hollows showing, only full-bodied roundness and the wärmest of flesh tones.
Looking upward in her mirror, she saw Ann furiously trying to bunch her undergarments.
"Don't be impatient, Ann. You'll blossom forth . . . someday."
"Better make this dining pay, Mary. Ma says it's your last if you don't manage a proposai from Sandy."
Stung this time, Mary whirled about.
"Mother said no such thing!"
Her voice rose from its usuai low, self-possessed tone, the color pounded Vissza