Lady Bassett observed, and said, kindly, "Mary, you can give me that shawl; I will not keep you; go where you like till five o'clock." Mary never said so much as "Thank you." She put the shawl round her mistress, and then went slowly back.

She sat down on the stone steps, and glared stupidly at the scene, and felt very miserable and leaden.
She seemed to be stuck in a sort of slough of despond, and could not move in any direction to get out of it.
While she sat in this somber reverie a gentleman walked up to the door, and Mary Wells lifted her head and looked at him.

Notwithstanding her misery, her eyes rested on him with some admiration, for he was a model of a man: six feet high, and built like an athlete.

His face was oval, and his skin dark but glowing; his hair, eyebrows, and long eyelashes black as jet; his gray eyes large and tender.

He was dressed in black, with a white tie, and his clothes were well cut, and seemed superlatively so, owing to the importance and symmetry of the figure they covered.