"Very well, then; with many thanks, I will keep it." She looked at the
young man a moment, while her daughter walked away. Longueville thought
her a delightful little person; she struck him as a sort of transfigured
Quakeress--a mystic with a practical side. "I am sure you think she 's a
strange girl," she said.

"She is extremely pretty."

"She is very clever," said the mother.

"She is wonderfully graceful."

"Ah, but she 's good!" cried the old lady.

"I am sure she comes honestly by that," said Longueville, expressively,
while his companion, returning his salutation with a certain scrupulous
grace of her own, hurried after her daughter.

Longueville remained there staring at the view but not especially seeing
it. He felt as if he had at once enjoyed and lost an opportunity. After
a while he tried to make a sketch of the old beggar-woman who sat there
in a sort of palsied immobility, like a rickety statue at a church-door.
But his attempt to reproduce her features was not gratifying, and he
suddenly laid down his brush. She was not pretty enough--she had a bad
profile.