much as set eyes on him since he was eleven and had his last serious
illness, the tall, slender, refined, and rather melancholy young
gentleman of twenty came upon her with the shock of a new acquaintance.
He was "Young Hermiston," "the laird himsel' ": he had an air of
distinctive superiority, a cold straight glance of his black eyes, that
abashed the woman's tantrums in the beginning, and therefore the
possibility of any quarrel was excluded. He was new, and therefore
immediately aroused her curiosity; he was reticent, and kept it awake.
And lastly he was dark and she fair, and he was male and she female, the
everlasting fountains of interest.

Her feeling partook of the loyalty of a clanswoman, the hero-worship of
a maiden aunt, and the idolatry due to a god. No matter what he had
asked of her, ridiculous or tragic, she would have done it and joyed to
do it. Her passion, for it was nothing less, entirely filled her. It
was a rich physical pleasure to make his bed or light his lamp for him
when he was absent, to pull off his wet boots or wait on him at dinner
when he returned. A young man who should have so doted on the idea,
moral and physical, of any woman, might be properly described as being
in love, head and heels, and would have behaved himself accordingly.
But Kirstie - though her heart leaped at his coming footsteps - though,
when he patted her shoulder, her face brightened for the day - had not a
hope or thought beyond the present moment and its perpetuation to the
end of time. Till the end of time she would have had nothing altered,
but still continue delightedly to serve her idol, and be repaid (say
twice in the month) with a clap on the shoulder.

I have said her heart leaped - it is the accepted phrase. But rather,
when she was alone in any chamber of the house, and heard his foot
passing on the corridors, something in her bosom rose slowly until her