noon
`` Perhaps fifteen minutes had elapsed , and I had grown fearfully tired of waiting , when the corner of the curtain was suddenly thrown back , and the figure of a woman stood in the space thus created . Every thing behind her seemed to be in darkness ; but some description of bright light , which did not show through the curtain at all , and which seemed almost dazzling enough to be Calcium or Drummond , shed its rays directly upon her side-face , throwing every feature , from brow to chin , into bold relief , and making every fold of her dark dress visible . But I scarcely saw the dress , the face being so remarkable beyond any thing I had ever witnessed . I had looked to see an old , wrinkled hag -- it being the general understanding that all witches and fortune-tellers must be long past the noon of life ; but instead , I saw a woman who could not have been over thirty-five or forty , with a figure of regal magnificence , and a face that would have been , but for one circumstance , beautiful beyond description . Apelles never drew and Phidias never chiselled nose or brow of more classic perfection , and I have never seen the bow of Cupid in the mouth of any woman more ravishingly shown than in that feature of the countenance of the sorceress . `` I said that but for one circumstance that face would have been beautiful beyond description . And yet no human eye ever looked upon a face more hideously fearful than it was in reality .