Sublime

some small plump brownish person of firm but quiet carriage, who looks about her, but does not suppose that anybody is looking at her. If she has a broad face and square brow, well-marked eyebrows and curly dark hair, a certain expression of amusement in her glance which her mouth keeps the secret of, and for the rest features entirely insignifican

Rembrandt would have painted her with pleasure, and would have made her broad features look out of the canvas with intelligent honesty. For honesty, truth-telling fairness, was Mary’s reigning virtue: she neither tried to create illusions, nor indulged in them for her own behoof, and when she was in a good mood she had humour enough in her to laugh

Grace Macaulay, then: seventeen, small and plump, with skin that went brown by the end of May. Her hair was black and oily, and had the hot consoling scent of an animal in summer. She disliked books, and was by nature a thief if she found a thing to be beautiful, but not hers. She didn’t know she couldn’t sing. She was inclined to be cross.

It was usual with him to season his pleasure in showing favour to one person by being especially disagreeable to another, and Mary was always at hand to furnish the condiment

It may be that we are only here to learn how to love.

‘I do care about your mother’s money going,’ he said, when she was seated again and sewing quickly. ‘I wanted to ask you, Mary – don’t you think that Mr Featherstone – if you were to tell him – tell him, I mean, about apprenticing Alfred – would advance the money?’ ‘My family is not fond of begging, Fred. We would rather work for our money. Besides

‘This is Thomas,’ said Grace, without explanation. She stood close by the boy with the ease of long acquaintance, and seemed to Thomas they were in some way ranged against him – that it was possible to make out some connective tissue dissolving between himself and Grace, and re-forming between the other two.