The interim between Miranda setting down her lamp on the dungeon floor
among the rats and the beetles, and the dwarf's finding her bleeding
and senseless, was not more than twenty minutes, but a great deal may be
done in twenty minutes judiciously expended, and most decidedly it was
so in the present case. Both rats and beetles paused to contemplate the
flickering lamp, and Miranda paused to contemplate them, and Sir
Norman paused to contemplate her, for an instant or so in silence. Her
marvelous resemblance to Leoline, in all but one thing, struck him more
and more--there was the same beautiful transparent colorless complexion,
the same light, straight, graceful figure, the same small oval delicate
features; the same profuse waves of shining dark hair, the same large,
dark, brilliant eyes; the same, little, rosy pretty mouth, like one of
Correggio's smiling angels. The one thing wanting was expression--in
Leoline's face there was a kind of childlike simplicity; a look half
shy, half fearless, half solemn in her wonderful eyes; but in this,
her prototype, there was nothing shy or solemn; all was cold, hard, and
glittering, and the brooding eyes were full of a dull, dusky fire. She
looked as hard and cold and bitter, as she was beautiful; and Sir Norman
began to perplex himself inwardly as to what had brought her here.
Surely not sympathy, for nothing wearing that face of stone, could
even know the meaning of such a word. While he looked at her, half
wonderingly, half pityingly, half tenderly--a queer word that last,
but the feeling was caused by her resemblance to Leoline--she had been
moodily watching an old gray rat, the patriarch of his tribe, who was
making toward her in short runs, stopping between each one to stare at
her, out of his unpleasantly bright eyes. Suddenly, Miranda shut
her teeth, clenched her hands, and with a sort of fierce suppressed
ejaculation, lifted her shining foot and planted it full on the rat's
head. So sudden, so fierce, and so strong, was the stamp, that the
rat was crushed flat, and uttered a sharp and indignant squeal of
expostulation, while Sir Norman looked at her, thinking she had lost her
wits. Still she ground it down with a fiercer and stronger force every
second; and with her eyes still fixed upon it, and blazing with reddish
black flame, she said, in a sort of fiery hiss: "Look at it! The ugly, loathsome thing! Did you ever see anything look
more like him?"
There must have been some mysterious rapport between them, for he
understood at once to whom the solitary personal pronoun referred.
"Certainly, in the general expression of countenance there is rather a
marked resemblance, especially in the region of the teeth and eyes."
"Except that the rat's eyes are a thousand times handsomer," she broke
in, with a derisive laugh.