surface. Their nature more precisely, and as modified by the
creeping hours of time, was known only to those who watched the
circumstances of her history.

Personally, she was the combination of very interesting
particulars, whose rarity, however, lay in the combination itself
rather than in the individual elements combined. As a matter of
fact, you did not see the form and substance of her features when
conversing with her; and this charming power of preventing a
material study of her lineaments by an interlocutor, originated
not in the cloaking effect of a well-formed manner (for her manner
was childish and scarcely formed), but in the attractive crudeness
of the remarks themselves. She had lived all her life in
retirement--the monstrari gigito of idle men had not flattered
her, and at the age of nineteen or twenty she was no further on in
social consciousness than an urban young lady of fifteen.

One point in her, however, you did notice: that was her eyes. In
them was seen a sublimation of all of her; it was not necessary to
look further: there she lived.

These eyes were blue; blue as autumn distance--blue as the blue we
see between the retreating mouldings of hills and woody slopes on
a sunny September morning. A misty and shady blue, that had no
beginning or surface, and was looked INTO rather than AT.

As to her presence, it was not powerful; it was weak. Some women
can make their personality pervade the atmosphere of a whole
banqueting hall; Elfride's was no more pervasive than that of a
kitten.