He turned right and left a brilliant countenance that had the glitter of frost-light; it sparkled and was unreceptive.

No wonder Miss Adister deemed him wilder and stranger than ever.

She necessarily supposed the excess of his peculiarities to be an effect of the portrait, and would have had him, according to her ideas of a young man of some depth of feeling, dreamier.

On the contrary, he talked sheer commonplace.

He had ridden to the spur of the mountains, and had put up the mare, and groomed and fed her, not permitting another hand to touch her: all very well, and his praises of the mare likewise, but he had not a syllable for the sublime of the mountains.