The first thing I felt was, that she was a lady-woman.  And to feel that is almost to fall in love at first sight.  And out of this whole, the first thing you distinguished would be the grace over all.  She was rather slender, rather tall, rather dark-haired, and quite blue-eyed.  But I assure you it was not upon that occasion that I found out the colour of her eyes.  I was so taken with her whole that I knew nothing about her parts.  Yet she was blue-eyed, indicating northern extraction—­some centuries back perhaps.  That blue was the blue of the sea that had sunk through the eyes of some sea-rover’s wife and settled in those of her child, to be born when the voyage was over.  It had been dyed so deep INGRAYNE, as Spenser would say, that it had never been worn from the souls of the race since, and so was every now and then shining like heaven out at some of its eyes.  Her features were what is called regular.  They were delicate and brave.—­After the grace, the dignity was the next thing you came to discover.  And the only thing you would not have liked, you would have discovered last.  For when the shine of the courtesy with which she received me had faded away a certain look of negative haughtiness, of withdrawal, if not of repulsion, took its place, a look of consciousness of her own high breeding—­a pride, not of life, but of circumstance of life, which disappointed me in the midst of so much that was very lovely.  Her voice was sweet, and I could have fancied a tinge of sadness in it, to which impression her slowness of speech, without any drawl in it, contributed.  But I am not doing well as an artist in describing her so fully before my reader has become in the least degree interested in her.  I was seeing her, and no words can make him see her.

Fearing lest some such fancy as had possessed Judy should be moving in her mind, namely, that I was, if not exactly going to put her through her Catechism, yet going in some way or other to act the clergyman, I hastened to speak.

“This is a most romantic spot, Miss Oldcastle,” I said; “and as surprising as it is romantic.  I could hardly believe my eyes when I looked out of the window and saw it first.”

“Your surprise was the more natural that the place itself is not properly natural, as you must have discovered.”

This was rather a remarkable speech for a young lady to make.  I answered—­

“I only know that such a chasm is the last thing I should have expected to find in this gently undulating country.  That it is artificial I was no more prepared to hear than I was to see the place itself.”

“It looks pretty, but it has not a very poetic origin,” she returned.  “It is nothing but the quarry out of which the old house at the top of it was built.”

“I must venture to differ from you entirely in the aspect such an origin assumes to me,” I said.  “It seems to me a more poetic origin than any convulsion of nature whatever would have been; for, look you,” I said—­being as a young man too much inclined to the didactic, “for, look you,” I said—­and she did look at me—­“from that buried mass of rock has arisen this living house with its histories of ages and generations; and”—­