It is at this point that Valartine arrove. She seemed sad and, regarding her attentively, one would have even seen traces of tears. Valartine, whom we have, dragged along by the rapidity of a narration that began in the ballet intermission of the Aïnoulindalée and continues yet today, for the hisses of a fickle public led to Morgot's fall from grace and the consequent banalisation of Arda, was a tall and svelte girl of nineteen (or thirty according to the chronology of the Shiré), with bright chestnut hair, deep blue eyes, and a languid and exquisite gait or rather carriage inherited from her deceased mother, Finduilette d'Imrahil; her white manicured hands, her pearly neck, her cheeks emmarbled with fugacious colours, tinged with a soupçon of the immortal ennui of elfinesse, gave her at first glance the aspect of one of those Snowwomen in whom the blood of Frosty runs pure, and who have been compared in their allure to swans.
Apperceiving the presence of a stranger, she greeted him without the least of girlish simperings and without lowering her eyes, but with the grace of a Lutienna di Lammermoor, redoubling the attention of the Count.
"Mlle. de Villefaramir, my stepdaughter," said Mme. de Villefaramir.
"And monsieur le comte de Monte Fato, Lord of the Rings and Imbiber of Enormous Quantities of Pipe-weed," said the cat Thibaut, looking up from scratching one of Villefaramir's precious Aragon XVI chairs.
