to its length. Her eyebrows were arched, the eyelids arched
also--very thin, showing the movement of the eyeballs beneath them,
drooping slightly, with a sweep of dark lashes at the outer corner. It
struck Richard that she bore a certain resemblance to his mother,
though smaller and slighter in build. Her mouth was less full, her hair
fairer--soft, glistening hair of all the many shades of heather
honey-comb, broken wax and sweet, heady liquor alike. Her hands, he
remarked, were very finished--the fingers pointed, the palms rosy. The
set of her black, velvet coat revealed the roundness of her bust. The
broad brim of her large, black hat, slightly upturned at the sides, and
with sweeping ostrich plumes as trimming to it, threw the upper part of
her charming face into soft shadow. Her heavy, dove-coloured, silk
skirts stood out stiffly from her waist, declaring its slenderness. The
few jewels she wore were of notable value. Her appearance, in fact,
spoke the last word of contemporary fashion in its most refined
application. She was a great lady, who knew the world and the worth of
it. And she was absolute mistress both of that knowledge, and of
herself--notwithstanding those outstretched hands, and outcry of
childlike pleasure,--there, perhaps, lay the exquisite flattery of this
last to her hearer! She was all this, and something more than all this.
Something for which Dickie, his heart still virgin, had no name as yet.
It was new to his experience. A something clear, simple, and natural,
as the sunlight, and yet infinitely subtle. A something ravishing, so
that you wanted to draw it very close, hold it, devour it. Yet
something you so feared, you needs must put it from you, so that, faint
with ecstasy, standing at a distance, you might bow yourself and humbly
worship. But such extravagant exercises being, in the nature of his
case, physically as well as socially inadmissible, the young man was
constrained to remain seated squarely in the saddle--that singularly
ungainly saddle, moreover, with holster-like appendages to it--while he
watched her, wholly charmed, curious and shy, carried indeed a little
out of himself, waiting for her to make further disclosures, since he
felt absurdly slow and unready of speech.

Nor was he destined to wait in vain. The fair lady appeared agreeably
ready to declare herself, and that with the finest turns of voice and
manner, with the most coercive variety of appeal, pathos, caprice, and
d