looked heroic. His hair, rising from the parting to the right of his
forehead, in what his admiring Lady Blandish called his plume, fell away
slanting silkily to the temples across the nearly imperceptible upward
curve of his brows there--felt more than seen, so slight it was--and gave
to his profile a bold beauty, to which his bashful, breathless air was a
flattering charm. An arrow drawn to the head, capable of flying fast and
far with her! He leaned a little forward, drinking her in with all his
eyes, and young Love has a thousand. Then truly the System triumphed,
just ere it was to fall; and could Sir Austin have been content to draw
the arrow to the head, and let it fly, when it would fly, he might have
pointed to his son again, and said to the world, "Match him!" Such keen
bliss as the youth had in the sight of her, an innocent youth alone has
powers of soul in him to experience.

"O Women!" says The Pilgrim's Scrip, in one of its solitary outbursts,
"Women, who like, and will have for hero, a rake! how soon are you not to
learn that you have taken bankrupts to your bosoms, and that the
putrescent gold that attracted you is the slime of the Lake of Sin!"

If these two were Ferdinand and Miranda, Sir Austin was not Prospero, and
was not present, or their fates might have been different.

So they stood a moment, changing eyes, and then Miranda spoke, and they
came down to earth, feeling no less in heaven.

She spoke to thank him for his aid. She used quite common simple words;
and used them, no doubt, to express a common simple meaning: but to him
she was uttering magic, casting spells, and the effect they had on him
was manifested in the incoherence of his replies, which were too foolish
to be chronicled.