Before their inspection of these art-treasures was ended, he was fain to confess to himself that she was intelligent as well as beautiful.

It was not that she had said anything particularly brilliant, or had shown herself learned in the qualities of the old Dutch masters; but she possessed that charming childlike capacity for receiving information from a superior mind, and that perfect and rapid power of appreciating a clever man's conversation, which are apt to seem so delightful to the sterner sex when exhibited by a pretty woman.

At first she had been just a little shy and constrained in her talk with John Saltram.

Her lover's account of this man had not inspired her with any exalted opinion of his character.

She was rather inclined to look upon him as a person to be dreaded, a friend whose influence was dangerous at best, and who might prove the evil genius of Gilbert Fenton's life.