preciate
Georgina Gressie's fine points. She looked like a duchess,--I don't mean
that in foreign ports Benyon had associated with duchesses,--and she
took everything so seriously. That was flattering for the young man,
who was only a lieutenant, detailed for duty at the Brooklyn navy-yard,
without a penny in the world but his pay, with a set of plain, numerous,
seafaring, God-fearing relations in New Hampshire, a considerable
appearance of talent, a feverish, disguised ambition, and a slight
impediment in his speech.

He was a spare, tough young man, his dark hair was straight and
fine, and his face, a trifle pale, was smooth and carefully drawn.
He stammered a little, blushing when he did so, at long intervals.
I scarcely know how he appeared on shipboard, but on shore, in his
civilian's garb, which was of the neatest, he had as little as possible
an aroma of winds and waves. He was neither salt nor brown, nor red, nor
particularly "hearty." He never twitched up his trousers, nor, so far as
one could see, did he, with his modest, attentive manner, carry himself
as one accustomed to command. Of course, as a subaltern, he had more
to do in the way of obeying. He looked as if he followed some sedentary
calling, and was, indeed, supposed to be decidedly intellectual. He
was a lamb with women, to whose charms he was, as I have hinted,
susceptible; but with men he was different, and, I believe, as much of a
wolf as was necessary. He had a manner of adoring the handsome, insolent
queen of his affections (I will explain in a moment why I call
her insolent); indeed, he looked up to her literally as well as
sentimentally; for she was the least bit the taller of the two. He had
met her the summer before, on the piazza of a hotel at Fort Hamilton, to
which, with a brother officer, in a dusty buggy, he had driven over from
Brooklyn to spend a tremendously hot Sunday,--the kind of day when the
navy-yard was loathsome; and the acquaintance had been renewed by his
calling in Twelfth Street on New-Year's Day,--a considerable time
to wait for a pretext, but which proved the impression had not been
transitory. The acquaintance ripened, thanks to a zealous cultivation
(on his part) of occasions which Providence, it must be confessed,
placed at his disposal none too liberally; so that now Georgina took
up all his thoughts and a considerable part of his time. He was in love
with her, beyond a doubt; but he could not flatter himself that sh