paused a minute or more till the obstructing vehicles in front were
marshalled into order, there flashed upon her eyes a face radiant with
female beauty in its most glorious prime. Amongst the crowd at that
moment was a blind man, adding to the various discords of the street by a
miserable hurdy-gurdy. In the movement of the throng to get nearer to a
sight of the ladies in the carriage, this poor creature was thrown
forward; the dog that led him, an ugly brute, on his own account or his
master's took fright, broke from the string, and ran under the horses'
hoofs, snarling. The horses became restive; the blind man made a plunge
after his dog, and was all but run over. The lady in the first carriage,
alarmed for his safety, rose up from her seat, and made her outriders
dismount, lead away the poor blind man, and restore to him his dog. Thus
engaged, her face shone full upon Arabella Crane; and with that face
rushed a tide of earlier memories. Long, very long, since she had seen
that face,--seen it in those years when she herself, Arabella Crane, was
young and handsome.

The poor man,--who seemed not to realize the idea of the danger he had
escaped,--once more safe, the lady resumed her seat; and now that the
momentary animation of humane fear and womanly compassion passed from her
countenance, its expression altered; it took the calm, almost the
coldness, of a Greek statue. But with the calm there was a listless
melancholy which Greek sculpture never gives to the Parian stone: stone
cannot convey that melancholy; it is the shadow which needs for its
substance a living, mortal heart.

Crack went the whips: the horses bounded on; the equipage rolled fast
down the street, followed by its satellites. "Well!" said a voice in
the street below, "I never saw Lady Montfort in such beauty. Ah, here
comes my lord!"