This was no matter for once; even if more had been involved she could have made no attempt to shine.

There was something in the visitor that checked her and held her in suspense--made it more important she should get an impression of him than that she should produce one herself.

Besides, she had little skill in producing an impression which she knew to be expected: nothing could be happier, in general, than to seem dazzling, but she had a perverse unwillingness to glitter by arrangement.

Mr.Osmond, to do him justice, had a well-bred air of expecting nothing, a quiet ease that covered everything, even the first show of his own wit.

This was the more grateful as his face, his head, was sensitive; he was not handsome, but he was fine, as fine as one of the drawings in the long gallery above the bridge of the Uffizi.