descriptions, I will tell you that Madam Havelaar was not beautiful, but that she still had in language and look something very charming, and she showed very plainly, by the ease of her manner, that she had been in the world, and was at home in the higher classes of society. She had not that stiffness and unpleasantness of snobbish respectability which thinks that it must torment itself and others with “constraint,” in order to be considered distingué; and she did not care much for appearances which are thought much of by other women. In her dress too she was an example of simplicity. A white muslin Coadjoe[1] with a blue Cordelière,—I believe they call this in Europe peignoir,—was her travelling costume. Round her neck she wore a thin silk cord, from which hung two little medallions, invisible, because they were concealed in the folds of her dress. Her hair à la Chinoise, with a garland of melati[2] in the Kondek,[3]—completed her toilette.
I said that she was not beautiful, and yet I should not like you to think her ugly. I hope that you will find her beautiful as soon as I have an opportunity to show her to you, burning with indignation at what she called the “disregard of genius” when her Max was concerned, or when she was animated with an idea in connexion with the welfare of her child.
