Her complexion was delicate as the rose, her frame slender, her contour undulating and weak. She was the pattern of a trim English village maiden, with the beauty of youth, and the sweetness of ripening womanhood, sans sense, sans passion, sans character, sans everything—pretty vacuity. She seemed to feel her own inferiority beside the gorgeous Mehalah, and to be angry at it. She took off her bonnet, and the wind played with her yellow curls, and the setting sun spun them into a halo of gold about her delicate face.
"Loose your hair, Mehalah," said the spiteful girl.
"What for?"
"I want to see how it will look in the sun."
"Do so. Glory!" begged George. "How shining Phœbe's locks are! One might melt and coin them into guineas."
Mehalah pulled out a pin, and let her hair fall, a flood of warm black with red gleams in it. It reached her waist, and the wind scattered it about her like a veil.
If Phœbe's hair resembled a spring fleecy cloud gilded by the sun, buoyant in the soft warm air, that of Mehalah was like an angry thunder shower with a promise of sunshine gleaming through the rain,
"Black or gold, which do you most admire, George?" asked the saucy girl.
"That is not a fair question to put to me," said De Witt in reply; but he put his fingers through the dark tresses of Mehalah, and raised them to his lips. Phœbe bit her tongue.
"George," she said sharply. "See the sun is in my hair. I am in glory. That is better than being so only in name."
"But your glory is short-lived, Phœbe; the sun will be set in a minute, and then it is no more."
"And hers," she said spitefully, "hers—you imply—endures eternally. I will go home."
"Do not be angry, Phœbe, there cannot be thunder in such a golden cloud. There can be nothing worse than a rainbow."
"What have you got there about your neck, George?" she asked, pacified by the compliment.
