pronounced the time, according to the rule I have hinted at, a
foolish period of history. He sometimes wrote to her and had
within a week or two written from New York. She had thought it
very possible he would come in--had indeed all the rainy day been
vaguely expecting him. Now that she learned he was there,
nevertheless, she felt no eagerness to receive him. He was the
finest young man she had ever seen, was indeed quite a splendid
young man; he inspired her with a sentiment of high, of rare
respect. She had never felt equally moved to it by any other
person. He was supposed by the world in general to wish to marry
her, but this of course was between themselves. It at least may
be affirmed that he had travelled from New York to Albany
expressly to see her; having learned in the former city, where he
was spending a few days and where he had hoped to find her, that
she was still at the State capital. Isabel delayed for some
minutes to go to him; she moved about the room with a new sense
of complications. But at last she presented herself and found him
standing near the lamp. He was tall, strong and somewhat stiff;
he was also lean and brown. He was not romantically, he was much
rather obscurely, handsome; but his physiognomy had an air of
requesting your attention, which it rewarded according to the
charm you found in blue eyes of remarkable fixedness, the eyes of
a complexion other than his own, and a jaw of the somewhat
angular mould which is supposed to bespeak resolution. Isabel
said to herself that it bespoke resolution to-night; in spite of
which, in half an hour, Caspar Goodwood, who had arrived hopeful
as well as resolute, took his way back to his lodging with the
feeling of a man defeated. He was not, it may be added, a man
weakly to accept defeat.