No regular beauty pleases egotistical human beings so much as a softened and refined likeness of themselves; for this reason, fathers regard with complacency the lineaments of their daughters' faces, where frequently their own similitude is found flatteringly associated with softness of hue and delicacy of outline.

I was just wondering how that picture, to me so interesting, would strike an impartial spectator, when a voice close behind me pronounced the words-- "Humph! there's some sense in that face." I turned; at my elbow stood a tall man, young, though probably five or six years older than I--in other respects of an appearance the opposite to common place; though just now, as I am not disposed to paint his portrait in detail, the reader must be content with the silhouette I have just thrown off; it was all I myself saw of him for the moment: I did not investigate the colour of his eyebrows, nor of his eyes either; I saw his stature, and the outline of his shape; I saw, too, his fastidious-looking RETROUSSE nose; these observations, few in number, and general in character (the last excepted), sufficed, for they enabled me to recognize him.
"Good evening, Mr.Hunsden," muttered I with a bow, and then, like a shy noodle as I was, I began moving away--and why?
Simply because Mr.
Hunsden was a manufacturer and a millowner, and I was only a clerk, and my instinct propelled me from my superior.

I had frequently seen Hunsden in Bigben Close, where he came almost weekly to transact business with Mr.Crimsworth, but I had never spoken to him, nor he to me, and I owed him a sort of involuntary grudge, because he had more than once been the tacit witness of insults offered by Edward to me.

I had the conviction that he could only regard me as a poor-spirited slave, wherefore I now went about to shun his presence and eschew his conversation.
"Where are you going ?" asked he, as I edged off sideways.

I had already noticed that Mr.Hunsden indulged in abrupt forms of speech, and I perversely said to myself-- "He thinks he may speak as he likes to a poor clerk; but my mood is not, perhaps, so supple as he deems it, and his rough freedom pleases me not at all." I made some slight reply, rather indifferent than courteous, and continued to move away.