He comes and talks to me with amazement of the changes in her tone and outlook, of the girl's sharpening intellect and growing sensitiveness, and as he recalls incidents and traits of the London season--confessions or judgments or blunders of hers, and puts them beside the impression which he sees her to be making on Paul and myself--I begin to understand from his talk and his bewilderment something of the real nature of the case.
Intellectually, it has been "the ugly duckling" over again.

Under all the crude, unfledged imperfection of her young performance, you people who have watched her with your trained critical eyes seem to me never to have suspected the coming wings, the strange nascent power, which is only now asserting itself in the light of day.
'"What has Eustace been about ?" said Paul to me last night, after we had all returned from rambling round and round the moonlit Piazza, and he had been describing to me his talk with her.

"He ought to have seen farther ahead.

That creature is only just beginning to live--and it will be a life worth having! He has kindled it, too, as much as anybody.

Of course we have not seen her act yet, and ignorant--yes, she is certainly ignorant,--though not so much as I imagined.