Some one called out, "Make room for the general," and in an instant a wide opening was made between two saluting semicircles, suddenly parted from each other.
Then it became possible to see the centre, which was formed of a group of ladies, foremost amongst them a tall girl in a light travelling costume and a white straw hat with a long white veil floating loosely over it. Her hands were full of flowers; she kept receiving more and more, which she handed through the crowd of ladies to her mother at the carriage-door, who laid them aside. Now it could be seen by every one that the two were mother and daughter. They were about the same height, the daughter, if anything, taller than her mother; they had the same large grey eyes, but with very different expression, although both proclaimed the wide range of their inward dominion. The mother's told of a deep comprehension of the contradictions and sufferings of life, the daughter's of an ardent nature, of restless aspiration, of warring forces which as yet had not found expression; they sparkled with triumph, through which there gleamed now and then a lightning flash of impatience. She was tall, slender, supple; her movements seemed to reflect the radiance from her eyes. It was not with their own eyes that others saw her, but through the light of her own. The look of energy in her face was a powerful auxiliary in the spell her eyes exercised over mankind. The mother's face was oval--of pure outline and broad design; the daughter's was longer, sharper, the forehead higher and framed by abundant light brown hair. Her eyebrows were straight, her nose was aquiline, her chin decided, her lips firmly cut. The beauty of a Valkyrie, but not so defiant. Her magnetic attraction came from enthusiasm, from impulsiveness; the flame in her eyes was light, not heat. On the whole, the impression she made was that she was borne up by invisible forces; all who came under the spell of that impression seemed to be lifted up as well. She talked to those on each side of her and in front of her, she exchanged greetings, she accepted flowers, and laughed; those who followed all these movements and changes felt dazzled and bewildered as though they had been watching waves in the sunshine.