SCARLETT O'HARA was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charmas
the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features
of her mother,a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father.
But it was anarresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a
touch of hazel,starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her
thick black browsslanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin—that
skin so prized bySouthern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against
hot Georgiasuns.Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her
father’splantation, that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty picture. Her new green
flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly
matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta.
The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch waist, the smallest in three counties, and the
tightly fittingbasque showed breasts well matured for her sixteen years. But for all the modesty
of her spreadingskirts, the demureness of hair netted smoothly into a chignon and the quietness
of small whitehands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly concealed. The green eyes in the
carefully sweetface were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her
decorous demeanor. Hermanners had been imposed upon her by her mother's gentle admonitions and the
sterner disciplineof her mammy; her eyes were her own.On either side of her, the twins lounged
easily in their chairs, squinting at the sunlight throughtall mint-garnished glasses as they
laughed and talked, their long legs, booted to the knee and thickwith saddle muscles, crossed
negligently. Nineteen years old, six feet two inches tall, long of boneand hard of muscle, with
sunburned faces and deep auburn hair, their eyes merry and arrogant,their bodies clothed in
identical blue coats and mustard-colored breeches, they were as much alikeas two bolls of cotton
Outside, the late afternoon sun slanted down in the yard, throwing into gleaming brightness
thedogwood trees that were solid masses of white blossoms against the background of new green.
Thetwins' horses were hitched in the driveway, big animals, red as their masters' hair; and
around thehorses’ legs quarreled the pack of lean, nervous possum hounds that accompanied Stuart
and Brentwherever they went. A little aloof, as became an aristocrat, lay a black-spotted carriage
dog,muzzle on paws, patiently waiting for the boys to go home to supper.Between the hounds and the
horses and the twins there was a kinship deeper than that of theirconstant companionship. They were
all healthy, thoughtless young animals, sleek, graceful, high-spirited, the boys as mettlesome
as the horses they rode, mettlesome and dangerous but, withal,sweet-tempered to those who knew how
to handle them.