Jasper had better hurry back if he wished to enjoy
these luxuries.
Was the effect of the young woman's reserve meanwhile ungracious, or was
it only natural that in her particular situation she shouldn't have a
flow of compliment at her command? I noticed that Mrs. Nettlepoint
looked at her often, and certainly though she was undemonstrative Miss
Mavis was interesting. The candlelight enabled me to see that though not
in the very first flower of her youth she was still fresh and handsome.
Her eyes and hair were dark, her face was pale, and she held up her head
as if, with its thick braids and everything else involved in it, it were
an appurtenance she wasn't ashamed of. If her mother was excellent and
common she was not common--not at least flagrantly so--and perhaps also
not excellent. At all events she wouldn't be, in appearance at least, a
dreary appendage; which in the case of a person "hooking on" was always
something gained. Was it because something of a romantic or pathetic
interest usually attaches to a good creature who has been the victim of a
"long engagement" that this young lady made an impression on me from the
first--favoured as I had been so quickly with this glimpse of her
history? I could charge her certainly with no positive appeal; she only
held her tongue and smiled, and her smile corrected whatever suggestion
might have forced itself upon me that the spirit within her was dead--the
spirit of that promise of which she found herself doomed to carry out the
letter.
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