Brian walked at her side, saying very little, but not unobservant. He
knew a good deal about this Miss Palliser from Bessie's letters, which
had given him a detailed account of her chosen friend. He knew that the
damsel had carried on a clandestine flirtation with his cousin, and had
been expelled from Mauleverer Manor in consequence; and these facts,
albeit Bessie had pictured her friend as the innocent victim of tyranny
and wrong, had not given him a favourable opinion of his cousin's chosen
companion. A girl who would meet a lover on the sly, a girl who was
ignominiously ejected from a boarding-school, although clever and useful
there, could not be a proper person for his cousin to know. He was sorry
that Aunt Betsy's good nature had been stronger than her judgment, and
that she had brought such a girl to Kingthorpe as a permanent resident.
He had imagined her a flashy damsel, underbred, with a vulgar style of
beauty, a superficial cleverness, and all those baser arts by which the
needy sometimes ingratiate themselves into the favour of the rich.
Nothing could be more different from his fancy picture than the girl by
whose side he was walking, under that cloudless sky, where the larks were
singing high up in the blue.

What did he see, as he gravely contemplated the lady by his side? A
perfect profile, in which refinement was as distinctly marked as beauty
of line. Darkly fringed lids drooping over lovely eyes, which looked at
him shyly, shrinkingly, with unaffected modesty, when compelled to look.
A tall and beautifully modelled figure, set off by a simple white gown;
glorious dark hair, crowned with the plainest of straw hats. There was
nothing flashy or vulgar here, no trace of bad breeding in tone or
manner. Was this a girl to carry on illicit flirtations, to be mean
or underhand, to do anything meriting expulsion from a genteel
boarding-school? A thousand times no! He began to think that Bessie was