Page:The Portrait of a Lady (London, Macmillan & Co., 1881) Volume 1.djvu/56

---

him. He was the finest young man she had ever seen, was, indeed, quite a magnificent young man; he filled her with a certain feeling of respect which she had never entertained for any one else. He was supposed by the world in general to wish to marry her; but this of course was between themselves. It at least may be affirmed that he had travelled from New York to Albany expressly to see her; having learned in the former city, where he was spending a few days and where he had hoped to find her, that she was still at the capital. Isabel delayed for some minutes to go to him; she moved about the room with a certain feeling of embarrassment. But at last she presented herself, and found him standing near the lamp. He was tall, strong, and somewhat stiff; he was also lean and brown. He was not especially good-looking, but his physiognomy had an air of requesting your attention, which it rewarded or not, according to the charm you found in a blue eye of remarkable fixedness and a jaw of the somewhat angular mould, which is supposed to bespeak resolution. Isabel said to herself that it bespoke resolution to-night; but, nevertheless, an hour later, Caspar Goodwood, who had arrived hopeful as well as resolute, took his way back to his lodging with the feeling of a man defeated. He was not, however, a man to be discouraged by a defeat.