Then came, as it were, an appreciative gurgle from the Captain and
I was perfectly aware of a slight hesitation--a quick sharp motion
in Mrs Ashburnham, as if her horse had checked. But she put it at
the fence all right, rising from the seat she had taken and sitting
down opposite me, as it were, all in one motion. I never thought
that Leonora looked her best in evening dress. She seemed to get
it too clearly cut, there was no ruffling. She always affected black
and her shoulders were too classical. She seemed to stand out of
her corsage as a white marble bust might out of a black
Wedgwood vase. I don't know.

I loved Leonora always and, today, I would very cheerfully lay
down my life, what is left of it, in her service. But I am sure I
never had the beginnings of a trace of what is called the sex
instinct towards her. And I suppose--no I am certain that she never
had it towards me. As far as I am concerned I think it was those
white shoulders that did it. I seemed to feel when I looked at them
that, if ever I should press my lips upon them that they would be
slightly cold--not icily, not without a touch of human heat, but, as
they say of baths, with the chill off. I seemed to feel chilled at the
end of my lips when I looked at her . . .

No, Leonora always appeared to me at her best in a blue
tailor-made. Then her glorious hair wasn't deadened by her white
shoulders. Certain women's lines guide your eyes to their necks,
their eyelashes, their lips, their breasts. But Leonora's seemed to
conduct your gaze always to her wrist. And the wrist was at its
best in a black or a dog-skin glove and there was always a gold
circlet with a little chain supporting a very small golden key to a
dispatch box. Perhaps it was that in which she locked up her heart