"... I haven't known him very long, and Mamma says it's too soon; but he
makes me feel as if I had known him all my life. I know I said I wouldn't,
but I couldn't tell; I didn't know it would be so different. I couldn't
have believed that anybody could be so happy. You won't mind, Hatty. We
can love each other just the same...."

Incredible that Priscilla, who could be so beaten down and crushed by
suffering, should have risen to such an ecstasy. Her letters had a
swinging lilt, a hurried beat, like a song bursting, a heart beating for
joy too fast.

It would have to be a long engagement. Robin was in a provincial bank, he
had his way to make. Then, a year later, Prissy wrote and told them that
Robin had got a post in Parson's Bank in the City. He didn't know a soul
in London. Would they be kind to him and let him come to them sometimes,
on Saturdays and Sundays?

He came one Sunday. Harriett had wondered what he would be like, and he
was tall, slender-waisted, wide-shouldered; he had a square, very white
forehead; his brown hair was parted on one side, half curling at the tips
above his ears. His eyes--thin, black crystal, shining, turning, showing
speckles of brown and gray; perfectly set under straight eyebrows laid
very black on the white skin. His round, pouting chin had a dent in it.
The face in between was thin and irregular; the nose straight and serious
and rather long in profile, with a dip and a rise at three-quarters; in
full face straight again but shortened. His eyes had another meaning,
deeper and steadier than his fine slender mouth; but it was the mouth that
made you look at him. One arch of the bow was higher than the other; now
and then it quivered with an uneven, sensitive movement of its own.