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lady is dark. She moved forward
a few steps—and I said to myself, The lady is young. She
approached nearer—and I said to myself (with a sense of surprise
which words fail me to express), The lady is ugly!
    Never was the old conventional maxim, that Nature cannot err, more
flatly contradicted—never was the fair promise of a lovely figure
more strangely and startlingly belied by the face and head that
crowned it. The lady's complexion was almost swarthy, and the
dark down on her upper lip was almost a moustache. She had a
large, firm, masculine mouth and jaw; prominent, piercing,
resolute brown eyes; and thick, coal-black hair, growing unusually
low down on her forehead. Her expression—bright, frank, and
intelligent—appeared, while she was silent, to be altogether
wanting in those feminine attractions of gentleness and
pliability, without which the beauty of the handsomest woman alive
is beauty incomplete. To see such a face as this set on shoulders
that a sculptor would have longed to model—to be charmed by the
modest graces of action through which the symmetrical limbs
betrayed their beauty when they moved, and then to be almost
repelled by the masculine form and masculine look of the features
in which the perfectly shaped figure ended—was to feel a
sensation oddly akin to the helpless discomfort familiar to us all
in sleep, when we recognise yet cannot reconcile the anomalies and
contradictions of a dream.
    "Mr. Hartright?" said the lady interrogatively, her dark face
lighting up with a smile, and softening and growing womanly the
moment she began to speak. "We resigned all hope of you last
night, and went to bed as usual. Accept my apologies for our
apparent want of attention; and allow me to introduce myself as
one of your pupils. Shall we shake hands? I suppose we must come
to it sooner or later—and why not sooner?"
    These odd words of welcome were spoken in a clear, ringing,
pleasant voice. The offered hand—rather large, but beautifully
formed—was given to me with the easy, unaffected self-reliance of
a highly-bred woman. We sat down together at the breakfast-table
in as cordial and customary a manner as if we had known each other
for years, and had met at Limmeridge House to talk over old times
by previous appointment.
    "I hope you come here good-humouredly determined to make the best
of your position," continued the lady. "You will have to begin
this morning by putting up with no other company at breakfast than
mine. My sister is in her own room, nursing that essentially
feminine malady, a slight headache; and her old governness, Mrs.
Vesey, is charitably attending on her with restorative tea. My
uncle, Mr. Fairlie, never joins us at any of our meals: he is an
invalid, and keeps bachelor state in his own apartments. There is
nobody else in the house but me. Two young ladies have been
staying here, but they went away yesterday, in despair; and no
wonder. All through their visit (in consequence of Mr. Fairlie's
invalid condition) we produced no such convenience in the house as
a flirtable, danceable, small-talkable creature of the male sex;
and the consequence was, we did nothing but quarrel, especially at
dinner-time. How can you expect four women to dine together alone
every day, and not quarrel? We are such fools, we can't entertain
each other at table. You see I don't think much of my own sex,
Mr. Hartright—which will you have, tea or coffee?—no woman does
think much of her own sex, although few of them confess it as
freely as I do. Dear me, you look puzzled. Why? Are you
wondering what you will have for breakfast? or are you surprised
at my careless way of talking? In the first case, I advise you, as
a friend, to have nothing to do with that cold ham at your elbow,
and to wait till the omelette comes in. In the second case, I
will give you some tea to compose your spirits, and do all a woman
can (which is very little, by-the-bye) to hold my tongue."
    She handed me my cup of tea, laughing