Women -- Social conditions -- 19th century -- Fiction
He had been gone some little time, when a waiter of the hotel, throwing
open Ethel's drawing-room door, announced "Signor Orazio." Quite new to
Italy, Ethel was ignorant of the custom in that country, of designating
people by their christian names; and that Horatio Saville, being a
resident in Naples, and married to a Neapolitan, was known everywhere by
the appellation which the servant now used. Ethel was not in the least
aware that it was Lucy's brother who presented himself to her. She saw a
gentleman, tall, very slight in person, with a face denoting habitual
thoughtfulness, and stamped by an individuality which she could not tell
whether to think plain, and yet it was certainly open and kind. An
appearance of extreme shyness, almost amounting to awkwardness, was
diffused over him, and his words came hesitatingly; he spoke English,
and was an Englishman--so much Ethel discovered by his first words,
which were, "Villiers is not at home?" and then he began to ask her
about her journey, and how she liked the view of the bay of Naples,
which she beheld from her windows. They were in this kind of trivial
conversation when Edward came bounding up-stairs, and with exclamations
of delight greeted his cousin. Ethel, infinitely surprised, examined her
guest with more care. In a few minutes she began to wonder how she came
to think him plain. His deep-set, dark-grey eyes struck her as
expressive, if not handsome. His features were delicately moulded, and
his fine forehead betokened depth of intellect; but the charm of his
face was a kind of fitful, beamy, inconstant smile, which diffused
incomparable sweetness over his physiognomy. His usual look was cold and
abstracted--his eye speculated with an inward thoughtfulness--a chilling
seriousness sat on his features, but this glancing and varying
half-smile came to dispel gloom, and to invite and please those with
whom he conversed. His voice was modulated by feeling, his language was
fluent, graceful in its turns of expression, and original in the
thoughts which it expressed. His manners were marked by high breeding,
yet they were peculiar. They were formed by his individual disposition,
and under the dominion of sensibility. Hence they were often abrupt and
reserved. He forgot the world around him, and gave token, by absence of
mind, of the absorbing nature of his contemplations. But at a touch this
vanished, and a sweet earnestness, and a beaming kindliness of spirit,
at once displaced his abstraction, rendering him attentive, cordial, and
gay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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