Fine madam, with those damnable small feet! We cover up our face from doing good, As if it were our purse! What brings you here, My lady? is’t to find my gentleman Who visits his tame pigeon in the eaves? Our cholera catch you with its cramps and spasms, And tumble up your good clothes, veil and all, And turn your whiteness dead-blue.’ I looked up; I think I could have walked through hell that day, And never flinched. ‘The dear Christ comfort you,’ I said, ‘you must have been most miserable To be so cruel,’—and I emptied out My purse upon the stones: when, as I had cast The last charm in the cauldron, the whole court Went boiling, bubbling up, from all its doors And windows, with a hideous wail of laughs And roar of oaths, and blows perhaps ... I passed Too quickly for distinguishing ... and pushed A little side-door hanging on a hinge, And plunged into the dark, and groped and climbed The long, steep, narrow stair ’twixt broken rail And mildewed wall that let the plaster drop To startle me in the blackness. Still, up, up! So high lived Romney’s bride. I paused at last Before a low door in the roof, and knocked; There came an answer like a hurried dove— ‘So soon? can that be Mister Leigh? so soon?’ And as I entered, an ineffable face Met mine upon the threshold. ‘Oh, not you, Not you!’ ... the dropping of the voice implied, ‘Then, if not you, for me not any one.’ I looked her in the eyes, and held her hands, And said, ‘I am his cousin,—Romney Leigh’s; And here I’m come to see my cousin too.’ She touched me with her face and with her voice, This daughter of the people. Such soft flowers, From such rough roots? the people, under there, Can sin so, curse so, look so, smell so ... faugh! Yet have such daughters? No wise beautiful Was Marian Erle. She was not white nor brown, But could look either, like a mist that changed According to being shone on more or less. The hair, too, ran its opulence of curls In doubt ’twixt dark and bright, nor left you clear To name the colour. Too much hair perhaps (I’ll name a fault here) for so small a head, Which seemed to droop on that side and on this, As a full-blown rose uneasy with its weight, Though not a breath should trouble it. Again, The dimple in the cheek had better gone With redder, fuller rounds: and somewhat large The mouth was, though the milky little teeth Dissolved it to so infantine a smile! For soon it smiled at me; the eyes smiled too, But ’twas as if remembering they had wept, And knowing they should, some day, weep again.