Still, she was undeniably very pretty.

There was something in the curves of her shoulders, in her pink-and-white cotton waist, that made one's fingers tingle, and heart yearn, and there was an appealing look in her face which made him smile indulgently at her as he might have done at a child.

After all, it was probably not her fault about the lamp, and lamps were a minor consideration, and he was finical, but suppose she liked it?
Lloyd, sitting there, began to speculate if it were possible for one's spiritual nature to be definitely damaged by hideous lamps.

Then he caught sight of a plate decorated with postage-stamps, with a perforated edge through which ribbons were run, and he wondered if she possibly made that.
"They are undoubtedly perfectly moral people," he told his aunt Cynthia afterwards, "but I wonder that they keep such an immoral plate." However, that was before he fell in love with Ellen, while he was struggling with himself in his desire to do so, and making all manner of sport of himself by way of hindrance.
Ellen at that age could have had no possible conception of the sentiment with which the young man viewed her environment.

She was sensitive to spiritual discords which might arise from meeting with another widely different nature, but when it came to material things, she was at a loss.