She had been surprised, smiling, and scribbling Mr.Franklin's name inside her workbox.

She had been surprised again, crying and looking at her deformed shoulder in the glass.

Had she and Mr.Franklin known anything of each other before to-day?
Quite impossible! Had they heard anything of each other?
Impossible again! I could speak to Mr.Franklin's astonishment as genuine, when he saw how the girl stared at him.
Penelope could speak to the girl's inquisitiveness as genuine, when she asked questions about Mr.Franklin.The conference between us, conducted in this way, was tiresome enough, until my daughter suddenly ended it by bursting out with what I thought the most monstrous supposition I had ever heard in my life.
"Father!" says Penelope, quite seriously, "there's only one explanation of it.

Rosanna has fallen in love with Mr.Franklin Blake at first sight!" You have heard of beautiful young ladies falling in love at first sight, and have thought it natural enough.

But a housemaid out of a reformatory, with a plain face and a deformed shoulder, falling in love, at first sight, with a gentleman who comes on a visit to her mistress's house, match me that, in the way of an absurdity, out of any story-book in Christendom, if you can! I laughed till the tears rolled down my cheeks.