She left the door open and kept coming and going between the kitchen
and the parlour, busy about house affairs. Wingfold sat and watched
her as he had opportunity with growing interest.

She had the full-sized head that is so often set on a small body,
and it looked yet larger from the quantity of rich brown hair upon
it--hair which some ladies would have given their income to
possess. Clearly too it gave pleasure to its owner, for it was
becomingly as well as carefully and modestly dressed. Her face
seemed to Wingfold more interesting every fresh peep he had of it,
until at last he pronounced it to himself one of the sweetest he had
ever seen. Its prevailing expression was of placidity, and something
that was not contentment merely: I would term it satisfaction, were
I sure that my reader would call up the very antipode of
SELF-satisfaction. And yet there were lines of past and shadows of
present suffering upon it. The only sign however that her poor
crooked body was not at present totally forgotten, was a slight shy
undulation that now and then flickered along the lines of her
sensitive mouth, seeming to indicate a shadowy dim-defined thought,
or rather feeling, of apology, as if she would disarm prejudice by
an expression of sorrow that she could not help the pain and
annoyance her unsightliness must occasion. Every feature in her thin
face was good, and seemed, individually almost, to speak of a loving
spirit, yet he could see ground for suspecting that keen expressions
of a quick temper could be no strangers upon those delicately
modelled forms. Her hands and feet were both as to size and shape
those of a mere child.

He was still studying her like a book which a boy reads by stealth,