"Now it is my turn! Let me ride, and I will give your character!"
"Oh! we don't need it, I assure you," said I; "we understand him
entirely."
"Not a bit of it!" said he, shaking his brown curls; "I am the
transparent one."
He stepped up on the wheel-hub to get his bag, and to say he should
strike off for Middleton on foot. He would see us very soon in New York,
and claim our promise to visit him.
Being relieved from the fascination of personal beauty and presence,
with only the impression of character remaining, I was a little ashamed
to find how much I had liked, without being at all able to esteem him.
It was with a very different feeling that I looked at Mr. Lewis, whose
ugly, positively ugly face was being perpetually transfigured with
emotion and variety. Without grace of feature or figure, he impressed
one as a living soul; and this inward light gave a translucent beauty
to the frail, chance-shapen vase, which all Mr. Remington's personal
advantages of form and color failed to impress us with. Only dark eyes
of un-sounded depth, and a voice whose rich cadences had an answering
rhythm in the inward man, showed what his attractions might be, or were,
to a woman. We became curious to see Mrs. Lewis, of whom we gained no
idea from his casual references to her.
* * * * *