, and it extended to
impalpabilities. His dense, delicate hair, his overdrawn, retouched
features, his clear complexion, ripe without being coarse, the very
evenness of the growth of his beard, and that light, smooth slenderness
of structure which made the movement of a single one of his fingers
produce the effect of an expressive gesture--these personal points
struck our sensitive young woman as signs of quality, of intensity,
somehow as promises of interest. He was certainly fastidious and
critical; he was probably irritable. His sensibility had governed
him--possibly governed him too much; it had made him impatient of
vulgar troubles and had led him to live by himself, in a sorted, sifted,
arranged world, thinking about art and beauty and history. He had
consulted his taste in everything--his taste alone perhaps, as a sick
man consciously incurable consults at last only his lawyer: that was
what made him so different from every one else. Ralph had something of
this same quality, this appearance of thinking that life was a matter
of connoisseurship; but in Ralph it was an anomaly, a kind of humorous
excrescence, whereas in Mr. Osmond it was the keynote, and everything
was in harmony with it. She was certainly far from understanding him
completely; his meaning was not at all times obvious. It was hard to see
what he meant for instance by speaking of his provincial side--which
was exactly the side she would have taken him most to lack. Was it a
harmless paradox, intended to puzzle her? or was it the last refinement
of high culture? She trusted she should learn in time; it would be very
interesting to learn. If it was provincial to have that harmony, what
then was the finish of the capital? And she could put this question
in spite of so feeling her host a shy personage; since such shyness as
his--the shyness of ticklish nerves and fine perceptions--was perfectly
consistent with the best breeding. Indeed it was almost a proof of
standards and touchstones other than the vulgar: he must be so sure the
vulgar would be first on the ground. He wasn't a man of easy assurance,
who chatted and gossiped with the fluency of a superficial nature; he
was critical of himself as well as of others, and, exacting a good deal
of others, to think them agreeable, probably took a rather ironical view
of what he himself offered: a proof into the bargain that he was not
grossly conceited. If he had not been shy he wouldn't have effected that
gr