capricious rule of chance should sway the action of our faculties that
a trifle should set in motion the whole complicated machinery of their
exercise, and a trifle suspend it.

We had been moving onward for some little time, when the girl's
companion addressed an observation to her. She heard it imperfectly,
and lifted her veil while it was being repeated. How painfully my
heart beat! I could almost hear it--as her face was, for the first
time, freely and fairly disclosed!

She was dark. Her hair, eyes, and complexion were darker than usual in
English women. The form, the look altogether, of her face, coupled
with what I could see of her figure, made me guess her age to be about
twenty. There was the appearance of maturity already in the shape of
her features; but their expression still remained girlish, unformed,
unsettled. The fire in her large dark eyes, when she spoke, was
latent. Their languor, when she was silent--that voluptuous languor of
black eyes--was still fugitive and unsteady. The smile about her full
lips (to other eyes, they might have looked _too_ full) struggled to
be eloquent, yet dared not. Among women, there always seems something
left incomplete--a moral creation to be superinduced on the
physical--which love alone can develop, and which maternity perfects
still further, when developed. I thought, as I looked on her, how the
passing colour would fix itself brilliantly on her round, olive cheek;
how the expression that still hesitated to declare itself, would speak
out at last, would shine forth in the full luxury of its beauty, when
she heard the first words, received the first kiss, from the man she
loved!

While I still looked at her, as she sat opposite speaking to her