round
with that involuntary, suspicious glance which the subjects of any
bodily misfortune are very apt to cast round them. His eye wandered
over the company, none of whom, excepting myself and one other, had,
probably, noticed the movement. They fell at last on Iris,--his next
neighbor, you remember.

--We know in a moment, on looking suddenly at a person, if that person's
eyes have been fixed on us.

Sometimes we are conscious of it before we turn so as to see the person.
Strange secrets of curiosity, of impertinence, of malice, of love, leak
out in this way. There is no need of Mrs. Felix Lorraine's reflection
in the mirror, to tell us that she is plotting evil for us behind our
backs. We know it, as we know by the ominous stillness of a child that
some mischief or other is going-on. A young girl betrays, in a moment,
that her eyes have been feeding on the face where you find them fixed,
and not merely brushing over it with their pencils of blue or brown
light.

A certain involuntary adjustment assimilates us, you may also observe,
to that upon which we look. Roses redden the cheeks of her who stoops to
gather them, and buttercups turn little people's chins yellow. When we
look at a vast landscape, our chests expand as if we would enlarge to
fill it. When we examine a minute object, we naturally contract, not
only our foreheads, but all our dimensions. If I see two men wrestling,
I wrestle too, with my limbs and features. When a country-fellow comes
upon the stage, you will see twenty faces in the boxes putting on the
bumpkin expression. There is no need of multiplying instances to reach
this generalization; every person and thing we look upon puts its
special mark upon us. If this is repeated often enough, we get a
permanent resemblance to it, or, at least, a fixed aspect which we took
from it. Husband and wife come to look alike at last, as has often been
noticed. It is a common saying of a jockey, that he is "all horse"; and
I have often fancied that milkmen get a stiff, upright carriage, and an
angular movement of the arm, that remind one of a pump and the working
of its handle.

All this came in by accident, just because I happened to mention that
the Little Gentleman found that Iris had been looking at him with her
soul in her eyes, when his glance rested on her after wandering round
the company. What he thought, it is hard to say; but the shadow of
suspicion faded off from his face, and he looked calmly i