In the course of a walk with her the day after my arrival I found myself grabbing her arm with sudden and undue familiarity.  I had been struck by the beauty of a face that approached us and I was still more affected when I saw the face, at the sight of my companion, open like a window thrown wide.  A smile fluttered out of it an brightly as a drapery dropped from a sill—­a drapery shaken there in the sun by a young lady flanked by two young men, a wonderful young lady who, as we drew nearer, rushed up to Mrs. Meldrum with arms flourished for an embrace.  My immediate impression of her had been that she was dressed in mourning, but during the few moments she stood talking with our friend I made more discoveries.  The figure from the neck down was meagre, the stature insignificant, but the desire to please towered high, as well as the air of infallibly knowing how and of never, never missing it.  This was a little person whom I would have made a high bid for a good chance to paint.  The head, the features, the colour, the whole facial oval and radiance had a wonderful purity; the deep grey eyes—­the most agreeable, I thought, that I had ever seen—­brushed with a kind of winglike grace every object they encountered.  Their possessor was just back from Boulogne, where she had spent a week with dear Mrs. Floyd-Taylor:  this accounted for the effusiveness of her reunion with dear Mrs. Meldrum.  Her black garments were of the freshest and daintiest; she suggested a pink-and-white wreath at a showy funeral.  She confounded us for three minutes with her presence; she was a beauty of the great conscious public responsible order.  The young men, her companions, gazed at her and grinned:  I could see there were very few moments of the day at which young men, these or others, would not be so occupied.  The people who approached took leave of their manners; every one seemed to linger and gape.  When she brought her face close to Mrs. Meldrum’s—­and she appeared to be always bringing it close to somebody’s—­it was a marvel that objects so dissimilar should express the same general identity, the unmistakable character of the English gentlewoman.  Mrs. Meldrum sustained the comparison with her usual courage, but I wondered why she didn’t introduce me:  I should have had no objection to the bringing of such a face close to mine.  However, by the time the young lady moved on with her escort she herself bequeathed me a sense that some such rapprochement might still occur.  Was this by reason of the general frequency of encounters at Folkestone, or by reason of a subtle acknowledgment that she contrived to make of the rights, on the part of others, that such beauty as hers created?  I was in a position to answer that question after Mrs. Meldrum had answered a few of mine.

CHAPTER II