There one finds her upon the day of the decollation of Saint John the
Baptist, the fine August morning that starts the tale. Katharine the
Fair, men called her, with considerable show of reason. She was very
tall, and slim as a rush. Her eyes were large and black, having an
extreme lustre, like the gleam of undried ink,--a lustre at some times
uncanny. Her abundant hair, too, was black, and to-day seemed doubly
sombre by contrast with the gold netting which confined it. Her mouth
was scarlet, all curves, and her complexion was famous for its
brilliancy; only a precisian would have objected that she possessed
the Valois nose, long and thin and somewhat unduly overhanging the
mouth.
To-day as she came through the orchard, crimson garbed, she paused
with lifted eyebrows. Beyond the orchard wall there was a hodgepodge
of noises, among which a nice ear might distinguish the clatter of
hoofs, a yelping and scurrying, and a contention of soft bodies, and
above all a man's voice commanding the turmoil. She was seventeen, so
she climbed into the crotch of an apple-tree and peered over the wall.
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