“It is a happy inspiration, I think, to choose so respectable a host, and for a moment she is staggered. Probably she does actually know a bishop, and may have met a not ill-looking gentleman somewhat resembling myself at his house. In this moment I perceive that she is certainty young and very far removed, indeed, from being unattractive.
“To me, meeting her dark eyes for an instant, and then seeing the fair, full face turn to a fair profile as she looks away in some confusion, she seems beyond doubt very beautiful. A simple straw hat covers her dark coil of hair and slopes arrogantly forward over a luminous and brilliant eye; her nose is straight, her mouth small, suggesting decision and a little petulance, her chin deep and finely moulded, her complexion delicate as a rare piece of alabaster, while her figure matches these distracting charms.
“I make these notes so full that I may the better summon her to my memory. Also I note that the colors she wears are rich and bright; there is red and there is dark green; and they seem to make her beauty stand out with a boldness that corresponds to the dark glance of her eye. Not that she is anything but most modest in her demeanor, but, ah! that eye! Its glow betrays a fire deep underneath.
“Her eye meets mine again, then she says:
“'I—I don't know you. I thought you were—I mean I don't know why you spoke to me.'
“Evidently she does not quite know how to meet the situation.
“I decide that it is the duty of a gentleman to assist her.
“'I spoke because I thought I knew you, and hoped for an instant I was remembered.'
“'You had no business to,' she replies. Her air is haughty, but a little theatrical. I mean that she does not entirely convince me of her displeasure.