She could not help raising her eyes upon him, eyes full of a half-timid half-grateful friendliness.

His own returned her look with interest.
'"A spirit, but a woman too,"' he thought to himself with a new-born thrill of sympathy, as he went back to his seat.

She had not yet said a direct word to him, and yet he was curiously convinced that here was one of the most interesting persons, and one of the persons most interesting to _him_, that he had ever met.

What mingled delicacy and strength in the hand that had lain beside her on the dinner-table--what potential depths of feeling in the full dark fringed eye! Half-an-hour later, when Elsmere re-entered the drawing room, he found Catherine Leyburn sitting by an open French window that looked out on the lawn and on the dim rocky face of the fell.

Adeline Baker, a stooping, red-armed maiden, with a pretty face, set off, as she imagined, by a vast amount, of cheap finery, was sitting beside her, studying her with a timid adoration.