It was as if the mouth was the key to the whole: the key nothing without the text, the text uncomprehended without the key.
Such, then, was Lucretia Clavering in outward appearance at the age of twenty,--striking to the most careless eye; interesting and perplexing the student in that dark language never yet deciphered,--the human countenance.

The reader must have observed that the effect every face that he remarks for the first time produces is different from the impression it leaves upon him when habitually seen.

Perhaps no two persons differ more from each other than does the same countenance in our earliest recollection of it from the countenance regarded in the familiarity of repeated intercourse.

And this was especially the case with Lucretia Clavering's: the first impulse of nearly all who beheld it was distrust that partook of fear; it almost inspired you with a sense of danger.

The judgment rose up against it; the heart set itself on its guard.