expedition.  The noisy alarum told him he floundered in quags, like a silly creature chasing a marsh-lamp.  But was it so?  Was it not, on the contrary, a serious pursuit of the secret of a woman’s character?—­Oh, a woman and her character!  Ordinary women and their characters might set to work to get what relationship and likeness they could.  They had no secret to allure.  This one had:  she had the secret of lake waters under rock, unfathomable in limpidness.  He could not think of her without shooting at nature, and nature’s very sweetest and subtlest, for comparison.  As to her sex, his active man’s contempt of the petticoated secret attractive to boys and graylings, made him believe that in her he hunted the mind and the spirit:  perchance a double mind, a twilighted spirit; but not a mere woman.  She bore no resemblance to the bundle of women.  Well, she was worth studying; she had ideas, and could give ear to ideas.  Furthermore, a couple of the members of his family inclined to do her injustice.  At least, they judged her harshly, owing, he thought, to an inveterate opinion they held regarding Lord Dannisburgh’s obliquity in relation to women.  He shared it, and did not concur in, their verdict upon the woman implicated.  That is to say, knowing something of her now, he could see the possibility of her innocence in the special charm that her mere sparkle of features and speech, and her freshness would have for a man like his uncle.  The possibility pleaded strongly on her behalf, while the darker possibility weighted by his uncle’s reputation plucked at him from below.

She was delightful to hear, delightful to see; and her friends loved her and had faith in her.  So clever a woman might be too clever for her friends! . . .

The circle he moved in hummed of women, prompting novices as well as veterans to suspect that the multitude of them, and notably the fairest, yet more the cleverest, concealed the serpent somewhere.

She certainly had not directed any of her arts upon him.  Besides he was half engaged.  And that was a burning perplexity; not because of abstract scruples touching the necessity for love in marriage.  The young lady, great heiress though she was, and willing, as she allowed him to assume; graceful too, reputed a beauty; struck him cold.  He fancied her transparent, only Arctic.  Her transparency displayed to him all the common virtues, and a serene possession of the inestimable and eminent one outweighing all; but charm, wit, ardour, intercommunicative quickness, and kindling beauty, airy grace, were qualities that a man, it seemed, had to look for in women spotted by a doubt of their having the chief and priceless.