You understand that nothing is more disturbing than the upsetting of a preconceived idea.

Each of us arranges the world according to his own notion of the fitness of things.
To behold a girl where your average mediocre imagination had placed a comparatively old woman may easily become one of the strongest shocks.

.

.

" Marlow paused, smiling to himself.
"Powell remained impressed after all these years by the very recollection," he continued in a voice, amused perhaps but not mocking.
"He said to me only the other day with something like the first awe of that discovery lingering in his tone--he said to me: "Why, she seemed so young, so girlish, that I looked round for some woman which would be the captain's wife, though of course I knew there was no other woman on board that voyage." The voyage before, it seems, there had been the steward's wife to act as maid to Mrs.Anthony; but she was not taken that time for some reason he didn't know.