this was my first meeting that day. It was not very encouraging.

People complained that acquaintance made little way with her. That you
were, perhaps, well satisfied with your first day's progress, but the
next made no head-way; you found yourself this morning exactly at the
point from which you commenced yesterday, and to-morrow would recommence
where you started the day before. This is very disappointing, but may
sometimes be accounted for by there being nothing really to discover. It
seemed to me, however, that the distance had positively increased since
yesterday, and that the oftener she met me the more strange she became.
As we went out, Wylder enquired, with his usual good taste: 'Well, what
do you think of her?' Then he looked slily at me, laughing, with his
hands in his pockets. 'A little bit slow, eh?' he whispered, and laughed
again, and lounged into the hall. If Dorcas Brandon had been a plain
woman, I think she would have been voted an impertinent bore; but she was
so beautiful that she became an enigma. I looked at her as she stood
gravely gazing from the window. Is it Lady Macbeth? No; she never would
have had energy to plan her husband's career and manage that affair of
Duncan. A sultana rather--sublimely egotistical, without reverence--a
voluptuous and haughty embodiment of indifference. I paused, looking at a
picture, but thinking of her, and was surprised by her voice very near
me.

'Will you give me just a minute, Mr. De Cresseron, in the drawing-room,
while I show you a miniature? I want your opinion.'

So she floated on and I accompanied her.

'I think,' she said, 'you mentioned yesterday, that you remembered me
when an infant. You remember my poor mamma, don't you, very well?'