If his cousin were to be nothing more than an entertainment to him, Ralph was conscious she was an entertainment of a high order.

"A character like that," he said to himself--"a real little passionate force to see at play is the finest thing in nature.

It's finer than the finest work of art--than a Greek bas-relief, than a great Titian, than a Gothic cathedral.

It's very pleasant to be so well treated where one had least looked for it.

I had never been more blue, more bored, than for a week before she came; I had never expected less that anything pleasant would happen.