Page 409 - the-portrait-of-a-lady

The fluted shaft on which she had taken her seat would
have afforded a resting-place to several persons, and there
was plenty of room even for a highly-developed English-
man. This fine specimen of that great class seated himself
near our young lady, and in the course of five minutes he
had asked her several questions, taken rather at random
and to which, as he put some of them twice over, he appar-
ently somewhat missed catching the answer; had given her
too some information about himself which was not wast-
ed upon her calmer feminine sense. He repeated more than
once that he had not expected to meet her, and it was evi-
dent that the encounter touched him in a way that would
have made preparation advisable. He began abruptly to
pass from the impunity of things to their solemnity, and
from their being delightful to their being impossible. He
was splendidly sunburnt; even his multitudinous beard had
been burnished by the fire of Asia. He was dressed in the
loose-fitting, heterogeneous garments in which the English
traveller in foreign lands is wont to consult his comfort and
affirm his nationality; and with his pleasant steady eyes,
his bronzed complexion, fresh beneath its seasoning, his
manly figure, his minimizing manner and his general air
of being a gentleman and an explorer, he was such a repre-
sentative of the British race as need not in any clime have
been disavowed by those who have a kindness for it. Isabel
noted these things and was glad she had always liked him.
He had kept, evidently in spite of shocks, every one of his
merits—these properties partaking of the essence of great
decent houses, as one might put it; resembling their inner-

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