Woman's prescriptive infirmity had stalked into the sunlight, which had clothed it in the freshness of an originality.

A cynical inference was irresistible by Gabriel Oak as he regarded the scene, generous though he fain would have been.

There was no necessity whatever for her looking in the glass.

She did not adjust her hat, or pat her hair, or press a dimple into shape, or do one thing to signify that any such intention had been her motive in taking up the glass.

She simply observed herself as a fair product of Nature in the feminine kind, her thoughts seeming to glide into far-off though likely dramas in which men would play a part--vistas of probable triumphs--the smiles being of a phase suggesting that hearts were imagined as lost and won.
Still, this was but conjecture, and the whole series of actions was so idly put forth as to make it rash to assert that intention had any part in them at all.
The waggoner's steps were heard returning.