A full assurance given by looks,
Continual comfort in a face."

I always think of that flame in an alabaster vase, when I see him; "one
sweet grace fed still with one sweet mind"; a countenance of another
sphere: that's Vaughan Rose. It provokes me that I can't paint him
myself, without other folk's words; but you see there's no natural image
of him in me, and so I can't throw it strongly on any canvas. As for his
manners, you've seen them;--now tell me, was there ever anything so
winning when he pleases, and always a most gracious courtesy in his
air, even when saying an insufferably uncivil thing? He has an art, a
science, of putting the unpleasant out of his sight, ignoring or looking
over it, which sometimes gives him an absent way; and that is because he
so delights in beauty; he seems to have woven a mist over his face then,
and to be shut in on his own inner loveliness; and many a woman thinks
he is perfectly devoted, when, very like, he is swinging over some
lonely Spanish sierra beneath the stars, or buried in noonday Brazilian
forests, half stifled with the fancied breath of every gorgeous blossom
of the zone. Till this time, it had been the perfection of form rather
than tint that had enthralled him; he had come home with severe ideas,
too severe; he needed me, you see.

But while looking at him and Lu, on that day, I didn't perceive half of
this, only felt annoyed at their behavior, and let them feel that I
was noticing them. There's nothing worse than that; it is a very
upas-breath, it puts on the brakes, and of course a chill and a
restraint overcame them till Mr. Dudley was announced.

"Dear! dear!" I exclaimed, getting upon my feet. "What ever shall we do,
Lu? I'm not dressed for him." And while I stood, Mr. Dudley came in.