Her eyes are bent on the pool at her feet; so that we can see nothing of them but the large sleepy lids, fringed with lashes so long and dark that the eye looks as if it had been painted, in the Eastern fashion, with antimony; the dark lashes, dark eyebrows, dark hair, crisped (as West-country hair so often is) to its very roots, increase the almost ghostlike paleness of the face, not sallow, not snow-white, but of a clear, bloodless, waxen hue.
And now she lifts her eyes,--dark eyes, of preternatural largeness; brilliant, too, but not with the sparkle of the diamond; brilliant as deep clear wells are, in which the mellow moonlight sleeps fathom-deep between black walls of rock; and round them, and round the wide-opened lips, and arching eyebrow, and slightly wrinkled forehead, hangs an air of melancholy thought, vague doubt, almost of startled fear; then that expression passes, and the whole face collapses into a languor of patient sadness, which seems to say,--"I cannot solve the mystery.

Let Him solve it as seems good to Him." The pier has, as usual, two stages; the upper and narrower for a public promenade, the lower and broader one for business.

Two rough collier-lads, strangers to the place, are lounging on the wall above, and begin, out of mere mischief, dropping pebbles on the group below.
"Hillo! you young rascals," calls an old man lounging like them on the wall; "if you don't drop that, you're likely to get your heads broken." "Will you do it ?" "I would thirty years ago; but I'll find a dozen in five minutes who will do it now.

Here, lads! here's two Welsh vagabonds pelting our schoolmistress." This is spoken to a group of Sea-Titans, who are sitting about on the pier-way behind him, in red caps, blue jackets, striped jerseys, bright brown trousers, and all the picturesque comfort of a fisherman's costume, superintending the mending of a boat.
Up jump half-a-dozen off the logs and baulkings, where they have been squatting, doubled up knee to nose, after the fashion of their class, and a volley of execrations, like a storm of grape, almost blows the two offenders off the wall.

The bolder, however, lingers, anathematising in turn; whereon a black-bearded youth, some six feet four in height, catches up an oar, makes a sweep at the shins of the lad above his head, and brings him writhing down upon the upper pier-way, whence he walks off howling, and muttering threats of "taking the law." In vain;--there is not a magistrate within ten miles; and custom, Lynch-law, and the coast-guard lieutenant, settle all matters in Aberalva town, and do so easily enough; for the petty crimes which fill our gaols are all unknown among those honest Vikings' sons; and any man who covets his neighbour's goods, instead of stealing them has only to go and borrow them, on condition, of course, of lending in his turn.
"What's that collier-lad hollering about, Captain Willis ?" asks Mr.
Tardrew, steward to Lord Scoutbush, landlord of Aberalva, as he comes up to the old man.
"Gentleman Jan cut him over, for pelting the schoolmistress below here." "Serve him right; he'll have to cut over that curate next, I reckon." "Oh, Mr.Tardrew, don't you talk so; the young gentleman is as kind a man as I ever saw, and comes in and out of our house like a lamb." "Wolf in sheep's clothing," growls Tardrew.
"What d'ye think he says to me last week?
Wanted to turn the schoolmistress out of her place because she went to chapel sometimes." "I know, I know," replied Willis, in the tone of a man who wished to avoid a painful subject.