bordering the fashionable one.

He almost regretted this conclusion, for the girl's forehead was so
high, her eyes so lofty and her delicate mouth so impressed with a proud
and energetical curl that no ambition would seem beyond the flight of
one thus beautiful and high-spirited.

Whatever the revolution she had exercised over him, he dared not avow
it, such respect did she inspire, and on her recovering from her
fleeting emotion, he let her resume her way without a word to detain
her.

She had not reached the first plank of the bridge before he suddenly
remembered the officer, like himself, in ambush; and in the same manner
as love--if that were love--had clutched his heart with the swiftness of
an eagle seizing its quarry, another sentiment, as fierce and
overpowering, jealousy, stung him to the quick.

As he glanced--but he had not taken his eyes off her, not even to look
if the military officer were still at his post--she had swept her
worsted wrapper round to set her foot on the first board of the bridge;
and he caught a glimpse, delightful and bewildering, of a foot, long but
slim and delicately modeled, and of a faultless ankle, in a vermilion
silk stocking and low-cut cordovan leather slipper--as theatrical as the
rest of her attire. Something innately aesthetical in the student, which
made him adore the exquisitely wrought, impelled him now to be the
slave--the devotee--the worshiper of this masterpiece of Nature.

Perhaps she stood in need of a defender?