The Sicilian himself impressed her as singularly honest and bold, but she was much more ready to believe that the friend who had sent him might have interested views, than that Bosio Macomer, whom she liked and admired, was anxious to get possession of her fortune.
Taquisara himself had struck her as something new in the way of a man, of a sort such as she had never seen nor dreamt of, and her mind dwelt long on the recollection of the interview.

In some way which she could not explain, she vaguely connected him with the book she was now reading--the Bride of Lammermoor; in other words, he appeared to her in the light of a romantic character, and the first that had ever come within the circle of her experience.

His recklessness of formalities, of all the limits supposed to be set upon the conversation of mere acquaintance, of what she might or might not think of him individually, so long as she would listen to what he had to say for his friend, seemed to her to belong to a type of humanity with which she had never come in contact.

He, and he only, as yet had stirred some thought of another existence than the one which seemed to lie straight before her,--a broad, plain road, as the wife of Bosio.
Of love, indeed, there was nothing in her heart, for any man.

Within her all was yet dim and still as a sweet summer's night before the dawning.
In her firmament still shone the myriad stars that were her maiden thoughts, not yet lost in the high twilight, to be forgotten when love's sun should rise, in peace, or storm, as rise he must.