Those ruddy maidens, though now and then, indeed, one or two might steal an admiring glance at a figure of elegance so unusual, regarded him not with the female interest he had been accustomed to inspire.

They felt instinctively that he could be nothing to them, nor they to him,--a mere London fop, and not half so handsome as Squires Bluff and Chuff.
Rousing himself from this little vexation to his vanity with a conscious smile at his own weakness, Vernon turned his looks towards the door, waiting for Lucretia's entrance, and since her uncle's address to him, feeling that new and indescribable interest in her appearance which is apt to steal into every breast when what was before but an indifferent acquaintance, is suddenly enhaloed with the light of a possible wife.
At length the door opened, and Lucretia entered.

Mr.Vernon lowered his book, and gazed with an earnestness that partook both of doubt and admiration.
Lucretia Clavering was tall,--tall beyond what is admitted to be tall in woman; but in her height there was nothing either awkward or masculine,--a figure more perfect never served for model to a sculptor.
The dress at that day, unbecoming as we now deem it, was not to her--at least, on the whole disadvantageous.

The short waist gave greater sweep to her majestic length of limb, while the classic thinness of the drapery betrayed the exact proportion and the exquisite contour.

The arms then were worn bare almost to the shoulder, and Lucretia's arms were not more faultless in shape than dazzling in their snowy colour; the stately neck, the falling shoulders, the firm, slight, yet rounded bust,--all would have charmed equally the artist and the sensualist.
Fortunately, the sole defect of her form was not apparent at a distance: that defect was in the hand; it had not the usual faults of female youthfulness,--the superfluity of flesh, the too rosy healthfulness of colour,--on the contrary, it was small and thin; but it was, nevertheless, more the hand of a man than a woman: the shape had a man's nervous distinctness, the veins swelled like sinews, the joints of the fingers were marked and prominent.