Page:A pair of blue eyes (1873 Volume 1).pdf/17

Rh tions lay very near the surface. Their nature more precisely, and as modified by the creeping hours of time, example will illustrate as those hours pass by.

Personally, she was combination of very interesting particulars, whose rarity, however, lay in the combination itself rather than in the individual elements combined. Will it be necessary to thrust her forward in the garish daylight, and describe her points as categorically as Cleopatra's messenger in depicting Octavia? Hardly. It might vulgarise her, and rob her of some of the sweetness which the stolen glimpses only that will for the present be taken may serve her heighten. For instance, the height of her figure; the turn of her head. These things may never be learnt to the very last page of the commentary.

There is, however, something more than the respect and love of her biographer to prompt this reticence. As a matter of fat, you did not see the form and substance of