though the combination of these details would have given the face a
stamp of distinction. Not so; the conclusion was false to the premises;
the whole betrayed the combined effect of the details.

"This contradiction," thought he, "evidently is the result of other
peculiarities which nullify the harmony of the more important features;
in the first place the thinness of the cheeks and their hue of old wood
dotted here and there with freckles, calm stains of the colour of stale
bran; then the flat braids of white hair drawn smooth under a frilled
cap, and finally the modest dress, a black dress clumsily made, dragging
across the bosom, and showing the lines of her stays stamped in relief
on the back.

"And perhaps, in her, it is not so much incongruity of features, as a
crying contrast between the dress and the face, the head and the body,"
thought he.

Altogether, as he summed her up, she was equally suggestive of the
chapel and the fields. Thus she had something of the Sister and
something of the peasant.

"Yes," he went on to himself, "that is very near the mark; but that is
not all, for she is both less dignified and less common, inferior and
yet more worthy. Seen from behind she is more like a woman who hires out
the chairs in church than like a nun; seen in front she is conspicuously
superior to the natives of the soil. Also it may be noted that when she
speaks of the saints she is loftier, quite different; she soars up in a
flame of the spirit. But all these hypotheses are in vain," he
concluded, "for I cannot judge of her from one brief impression, one
rapid view. What is quite certain is that, though she is not in the