recognised with equal
certainty, a woman: the opposite, the complement of man. Her eyes were
eyes you could imagine laughing at you, mocking you, teasing you, leading
you on, putting you off, seeing through you, disdaining you; but constant
in them was the miracle of womanhood; and you could imagine them
softening adorably, filling with heavenly weakness, yielding in womanly
surrender, trusting you, calling you, needing you.

Our melancholic young squire of Craford was not a man much given to
quick-born enthusiasms; but now, as he put down his pen, and her face
shone before him for the twentieth time this sunny afternoon, now all at
once, "By Jove, she's unique," he cried out. "I have never seen a woman
to touch her. If she _is_ Madame Torrebianca----"

But there he checked himself.

"Of course she is n't. No such luck," he said, in dejection.

And yet, he speculated, who else could she be? The simultaneous presence
of _two_ young foreign women in this out-of-the-way country neighbourhood
seemed, of all contingencies, the most unlikely. Well, if she really was
. . .

He was conscious suddenly of a sensation to the last degree unfamiliar: a
commotion, piercing, regretful, desirous, actually in his heart, an organ
he had for years proudly fancied immune; and he took alarm.

"Am I eighteen again? Positively, I must not think of her any more."

But it was useless. In two minutes he was thinking of her harder than
ever, and the commotion in his heart was renewed.

"If she really is Madame Torrebianca," he told himself, with a thrill and
a craving, "I shall see her on Sunday."

The flowers, beyond there, in the sun, the droning of the bees, the
liquid bird-notes, the perfumes in the still soft air, all seemed to melt
and become part of his thought of her, rendering it more poignant, more
insidiously sweet.

At last he started up, in a kind of anger.

"Bah!" he cried, "It's the weather. It's this imbecile, love-sick
weather."

And he carried his writing-materials indoors, to the billiard-room, a
northern room, looking into the big square court, where the light was
colourless, and the only perfume on the air was a ghost-like perfume of
last night's tobacco-smoke.

But I don't know that the change did much good. In a few minutes--

"Bah!" he cried again, "It's those confounded eyes of hers. It's those
laughing, searching, haunting, promising eyes."

"Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear."