Her looks however, were of that fortunate kind which lose nothing from
the open air and large backgrounds. Dress added but little to such
attractions as she had. Fineness and elegance were not hers, but her
healthy, ripe brownness fitted into this sylvan setting where the city
beauty would have soon become a pale and draggled thing.
The robust blood of her French Canadian forebears was quickening to the
call of the trail. Was it the spirit of her adventurous ancestors that
made her feel a kinship with the wild, an indifference to its
privations, a joy in its rude liberty? She was thinner, but stronger
and more vigorous than when the train had started. She talked less and
yet her whole being seemed more vibrantly alive, her glance to have
gained the gleaming quietness of those whose eyes scan vague horizons.
She who had been heavy on her feet now stepped with a light
noiselessness, and her body showed its full woman's outlines
straightened and lengthened to the litheness of a boy. Her father
noticed that the Gallic strain in her seemed to be crowding out the
other. In Rochester, under city roofs, she had been at least half his.
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