abbot, who, with much ceremony, came bowing, his horse led by the
bridle. She shut the door behind them and drove home the great bolts.
Servants came tumbling out to take the horses and do their duty; Count
Eustace, a brother of Jehane's, got up from the hearth, where he had
been asleep on a bearskin, rubbed his eyes, gulped a yawn, knelt, and
was kissed by Richard. Jehane stood apart, mistress of herself as it
seemed, but conscious, perhaps, that she was being watched. So she was.
In the bustle of salutation the Abbot Milo found eyes to see what manner
of sulky, beautiful girl this was.

He watched shrewdly, and has described her for us with the meticulous
particularity of his time and temper. He runs over her parts like a
virtuoso. The iris of her eyes, for instance, was wet grey, but ringed
with black and shot with yellow, giving so the effect of hot green; her
mouth was of an extraordinary dark red colour, very firm in texture,
close-grained, 'like the darker sort of strawberries,' says he. The
upper lip had the sulky curve; she looked discontented, and had reason
to be, under such a scrutiny of the microscope. Her hair was colour of
raw silk, eyebrows set rather high, face a thinnish oval, complexion
like a pink rose's, neck thinnish again, feet, hands, long and nervous,
'good working members,' etc. etc. None of this helps very much; too
detailed. But he noticed how tall she was and how slim, save for a very
beautiful bosom, too full for Dian's (he tells us), whom else she
resembled; how she was straight as a birch-tree; how in walking it
seemed as if her skirts clung about her knees. There was an air of
mingled surprise and defiance about her; she was a silent girl. 'Fronted
like Juno,' he appears to cry, 'shaped like Hebe, and like Demeter in
stature; sullen with most, but with one most sweetly apt, she looked
watchful but was really timid, looked cold but was secretly afire. I
knew soon enough how her case stood, how hope and doubt strove in her