He won't stand them." Alec blushed.

Kate went back to her seat, and took up her duster again.
Alec was a little short-sighted, though he had never discovered it till now.

When Kate leaned over her uncle's chair, near which he was sitting, he saw that she was still prettier than he had thought her before .-- There are few girls who to a short-sighted person look prettier when they come closer; the fact being that the general intent of the face, which the generalizing effect of the shortness of the sight reveals, has ordinarily more of beauty in it than has yet been carried out in detail; so that, as the girl approaches, one face seems to melt away, and another, less beautiful, to dawn up through it.
But, as I have said, this was not Alec's experience with Kate; for, whatever it might indicate, she looked prettier when she came nearer.
He found too that her great mass of hair, instead of being, as he had thought, dull, was in reality full of glints and golden hints, as if she had twisted up a handful of sunbeams with it in the morning, which, before night, had faded a little, catching something of the duskiness and shadowiness of their prison.

One thing more he saw--that her hand--she rested it on the back of the dark chair, and so it had caught his eye--was small and white; and those were all the qualities Alec was as yet capable of appreciating in a hand.

Before she got back to her seat, he was very nearly in love with her.