His cheek was pale and delicate; yet it was rather the delicacy of thought than of weak health.

His hair, which was long, and of a rich and deep brown, was worn back from his face and temples, and left a broad high majestic forehead utterly unrelieved and bare; and on the brow there was not a single wrinkle, it was as smooth as it might have been some fifteen years ago.

There was a singular calmness, and, so to speak, profundity, of thought, eloquent upon its clear expanse, which suggested the idea of one who had passed his life rather in contemplation than emotion.

It was a face that a physiognomist would have loved to look upon, so much did it speak both of the refinement and the dignity of intellect.
Such was the person--if pictures convey a faithful resemblance--of a man, certainly the most eminent in his day for various and profound learning, and a genius wholly self-taught, yet never contented to repose upon the wonderful stores it had laboriously accumulated.
He now stood before the two girls, silent, and evidently surprised; and it would scarce have been an unworthy subject for a picture--that ivied porch--that still spot--Madeline's reclining and subdued form and downcast eyes--the eager face of Ellinor, about to narrate the nature and cause of their intrusion--and the pale Student himself, thus suddenly aroused from his solitary meditations, and converted into the protector of beauty.
No sooner did Aram gather from Ellinor the outline of their story, and of Madeline's accident, than his countenance and manner testified the liveliest and most eager sympathy.

Madeline was inexpressibly touched and surprised at the kindly and respectful earnestness with which this recluse scholar--usually so cold and abstracted in mood--assisted and led her into the house: the sympathy he expressed for her pain--the sincerity of his tone--the compassion of his eyes--and as those dark--and to use her own thought--unfathomable orbs bent admiringly and yet so gently upon her, Madeline, even in spite of her pain, felt an indescribable, a delicious thrill at her heart, which in the presence of no one else had she ever experienced before.
Aram now summoned the only domestic his house possessed, who appeared in the form of an old woman, whom he seemed to have selected from the whole neighbourhood as the person most in keeping with the rigid seclusion he preserved.