The Line of Love by James Branch Cabell

Adelais came into the walled garden of Winstead, aflame now with autumnal scarlet and gold. She seated herself upon a semicircular marble bench, and laughed for no apparent reason, and contentedly waited what Dame Luck might send.

She was a comely maid, past argument or (as her lovers habitually complained) any adequate description. Circe, Colchian Medea, Viviane du Lac, were their favorite analogues; and what old romancers had fabled concerning these ladies they took to be the shadow of which Adelais Vernon was the substance. At times these rhapsodists might have supported their contention with a certain speciousness, such as was apparent today, for example, when against the garden's hurly-burly of color, the prodigal blazes of scarlet and saffron and wine-yellow, the girl's green gown glowed like an emerald, and her eyes, too, seemed emeralds, vivid, inscrutable, of a clear verdancy that was quite untinged with either blue or gray. Very black lashes shaded them. The long oval of her face (you might have objected), was of an absolute pallor, rarely quickening to a flush; but her petulant lips burned crimson, and her hair mimicked the dwindling radiance of the autumn sunlight and shamed it. All in all, the aspect of Adelais Vernon was, beyond any questioning, spiced with a sorcerous tang; say, the look of a young witch shrewd at love-potions, but ignorant of their flavor; yet before this the girl's comeliness had stirred men's hearts to madness, and the county boasted of it.