For in very different ways she was really loved by Lushington and by
Logotheti; and since she had been famous she had made the acquaintance
of a good many very high and imposing personages, whose names are to
be found in the first and second part of the _Almanack de Gotha_, in
the Olympian circle of the reigning or the supernal regions of the
Serene Mediatized, far above the common herd of dukes and princes;
they had offered her a share in the overflowing abundance of their
admirative protection; and then had seemed surprised, if not deeply
moved, by the independence she showed in declining their intimacy.
Some of them were frankly and contentedly cynical; some were of a
brutality compared with which the tastes and manners of a bargee would
have seemed ladylike; some were as refined and sensitive as English
old maids, though less scrupulous and much less shy; the one was
as generous as an Irish sailor, the next was as mean as a Normandy
peasant; some had offered her rivers of rubies, and some had proposed
to take her incognito for a drive in a cab, because it would be so
amusing--and so inexpensive. Yet in their families and varieties
they were all of the same species, all human and all subject to the
ordinary laws of attraction and repulsion. Rufus Van Torp was not like
them.

Neither of Margaret's selves could look upon him as a normal human
being. At first sight there was nothing so very unusual in his face,
certainly nothing that suggested a monster; and yet, whatever mood she
chanced to be in, she could not be with him five minutes without being
aware of something undefinable that always disturbed her profoundly,
and sometimes became positively terrifying. She always felt the
sensation coming upon her after a few moments, and when it had
actually come she could hardly hide her repulsion till she felt, as
to-day, that she must run from him, without the least consideration