A long gold chain descended from her neck to the watch-pocket at her waist, and her fingers exhibited several rings.

She bore the reverend gentleman's scrutiny with modest grace, almost as if it flattered her.

And indeed there was nothing whatever of ill-breeding in Mr.Wyvern's mode of instituting acquaintance with his parishioner; one felt that he was a man of pronounced originality, and that he might be trusted in his variance from the wonted modes.
The view from the windows gave him a subject for his first remarks.

Mrs.
Waltham had been in some fear of a question which would go to the roots of her soul's history; it would have been in keeping with his visage.
But, with native acuteness, she soon discovered that Mr.Wyvern's gaze had very little to do with the immediate subject of his thought, or, what was much the same thing, that he seldom gave the whole of his attention to the matter outwardly calling for it.

He was a man of profound mental absences; he could make replies, even put queries, and all the while be brooding intensely upon a wholly different subject.
Mrs.Waltham did not altogether relish it; she was in the habit of being heard with deference; but, to be sure, a clergyman only talked of worldly things by way of concession.