“Certainly, of course,” said Mr. Moggridge; “but you have come all the way from London and so early.  You will have some refreshment first, and if you’ll honour Mrs. Moggridge and me—­I may as well explain that I am the chief deacon,” said Mr. Moggridge, dexterously slipping off his painter’s apron and getting into his coat.  So, with a wistful glance at his work of art, Mr. Moggridge carried off the beautiful London lady to Zion View.

But was Isabel Strange beautiful?  It was a new sort of beauty if she was—­or perhaps a very old sort.  Yet beautiful was the first word that had sprung into Mr. Moggridge’s mind as she had surprised him in the schoolroom.  Perhaps wonderful was the exacter word, wonderful in a way that included beauty,—­wonderful, and with a strange air about her that suggested exceptional refinement, exquisite sensitiveness to refined things.

“Beautiful, O dear no!” said Mrs. Moggridge, to whom feminine beauty did not appeal, as the young lady freshened herself up after her travel in Mrs. Moggridge’s best bedroom.  “Why! she hasn’t a regular feature in her face!”

Mrs. Moggridge herself had neat little pretty features set in fat.

“Look at that long upper lip and her nose!”

Mrs. Moggridge omitted mention of eyes singularly powerful and very true and sweet, as also of a long lithe mouth that reminded you of a beautiful serpent, a serpent which the true eyes plainly said would do you no harm.

Presently, however, Mrs. Moggridge had to admit that she was very attractive.  She knew she meant fascinating, but she wouldn’t admit that to Mr. Moggridge, who had dropped the subject; though a mind which again had asserted its dim preference for new fashions was perhaps groping after expression of some such perplexity as this:  why, if a face has the same effect upon you as beauty, may it not be described as beautiful?  If Mr. Moggridge really got so far even as cloudily to ponder that, it is evident that he was not far from the kingdom of beauty.

It is, of course, true enough that some faces are spoilt by flaws such as every Mrs. Moggridge can point out,—­faces that begin in one style and end in another, half Greek perhaps and half Gothic; yet even such faces, if their individuality is strong enough, have their own rococo charm.  For all but supremely great faces, of which perhaps the world has not seen half-a-dozen, absolute regularity, so-called correctness, of features is a calamity, and regular beauty on the ordinary human levels is only another form of mediocrity.

Wonderful English girls! face after face indistinguishable from each other as rose after rose.  How sweet you are! how fragrant! what a bloom!  It is a wonderful rose-girl-farm from which you come.  How pretty you look laced up one after another on your standards, and how skilfully you are guarded against any form of variation!  Perhaps no women potteries in the world produce so exquisite a surface, delicate as a lily and strong as marble.  Indeed you are wonderful porcelain, you fair English girls, wonderful porcelain; but where are the stars?