If Lucy Foster had been merely a beauty, aware of her own value, and bent upon making him aware of it also, he would probably have been as careless of her now in the eighth week of their acquaintance as he had been in the first.
But it was a beauty so innocent, so interfused with suggestion, with an enchanting thrill of prophecy! It was not only what she said and looked, but what a man might divine in her--the 'white fire' of a nature most pure, most passionate, that somehow flashed through her maiden life and aspect, fighting with the restraints imposed upon it, and constantly transforming what might otherwise have been a cold seemliness into a soft and delicate majesty.
In short, there was a mystery in Lucy, for all her simplicity;--a mystery of feeling, which piqued and held the fastidious taste of Manisty.

It was this which made her loveliness tell.

Her sincerity was so rich and full, that it became dramatic,--a thing to watch, for the mere joy of the fresh, unfolding spectacle.

She was quite unconscious of this significance of hers.

Rather she was clearly and always conscious of weakness, ignorance, inexperience.