Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story

And this morning, while she knelt swaying and spreading over “his” doorstep, her blue eyes added certain tears to be scrubbed away in the general moisture of the stone. Rising, she dried her hands in her apron, and dried her eyes with her hands. Lest her mother should see that she had been crying, she loitered outside the door. Suddenly, her roving glance changed to a stare of acute hostility. She knew well that the person wandering towards her was--no, not “that Miss Dobson,” as she had for the fraction of an instant supposed, but the next worst thing. It has been said that Melisande indoors was an evidently French maid. Out of doors she was not less evidently Zuleika’s. Not that she aped her mistress. The resemblance had come by force of propinquity and devotion. Nature had laid no basis for it. Not one point of form or colour had the two women in common. It has been said that Zuleika was not strictly beautiful. Melisande, like most Frenchwomen, was strictly plain. But in expression and port, in her whole tournure, she had become, as every good maid does, her mistress’ replica. The poise of her head, the boldness of her regard and brilliance of her smile, the leisurely and swinging way in which she walked, with a hand on the hip--all these things of hers were Zuleika’s too. She was no conqueror. None but the man to whom she was betrothed--a waiter at the Cafe Tourtel, named Pelleas--had ever paid court to her; nor was she covetous of other hearts. Yet she looked victorious, and insatiable of victories, and “terrible as an army with banners.”