Peak searched
the latter's face for indications of her mood, but could discover
nothing save a spirit of gracious welcome. Such aspect was a matter of
course, and he knew it. None the less, his nervousness and the state of
mind engendered by a week's miserable solitude, tempted him to believe
that Sidwell did not always wear that smile in greeting a casual
caller. This was the first time that she had received him without the
countenance of Mrs. Warricombe. Observing her perfect manner, as she
sat down and began to talk, he asked himself what her age really was.
The question had never engaged his thoughts. Eleven years ago, when he
saw her at the house near Kingsmill and again at Whitelaw College, she
looked a very young girl, but whether of thirteen or sixteen he could
not at the time have determined, and such a margin of possibility
allowed her now to have reached--it might be--her twenty-seventh
summer. But twenty-seven drew perilously near to thirty; no, no,
Sidwell could not be more than twenty-five. Her eyes still had the dewy
freshness of flowering maidenhood; her cheek, her throat, were so
exquisitely young----

In how divine a calm must this girl have lived to show, even at
five-and-twenty, features as little marked by inward perturbation as
those of an infant! Her position in the world considered, one could
forgive her for having borne so lightly the inevitable sorrows of life,
for having dismissed so readily the spiritual doubts which were the
heritage of her time; but was she a total stranger to passion? Did not
the fact of her still remaining unmarried make probable such a
deficiency in her nature? Had she a place among the women whom coldness
of temperament preserves in a bloom like that of youth, until fading
hair and sinking cheek betray them----?

Whilst he thought thus, Godwin was in appearance busy with the fern
Fanny had brought for his inspection. He talked about it, but in
snatches, with intervals of abstractedness.

Yet might he not be altogether wrong? Last year, when he observed
Sidwell in the Cathedral and subsequently at home, his impression had
been that her face was of rather pallid and dreamy cast; he recollected
that distinctly. Had she changed, or did familiarity make him less
sensible of her finer traits? Possibly she enjoyed better health
nowadays, and, if so, it might result from influences other than
physical. Her air of quiet happiness seemed to him especially
noticeable this afte