Most people impress us more, perhaps, by their outward and physical, than by their inward and psychical life.  On a first interview with them, especially, we receive an impression of clothes, good or otherwise, of beauty or plainness or ugliness of feature, and of correctness or uncouthness of manner.  These are the common people, whether ladies and gentlemen, or simple men and women.  There are, however, others, in all ranks and conditions, so instinct and replete with spirit, that we chiefly feel, when they have come in our way, that a spirit has passed by,—­that a new life has been brought in contact with our own life.

Of these was Miss Dudley.  But because, ever since the day I write of, I have loved to think of her, and because I know that, when I rejoin her, I shall leave some behind me who will still love, and have a right to hear of her, I will indulge myself in saying something more.  That something shall be what I said to myself then, as I promenaded to and fro,—­that bodily exercise was one of my safety-valves in those times,—­in the endeavor to work off so much of my superfluous animation as to be in a state to sit down and paint again; and thus I spake:  “I must have had before me an uncommonly fine specimen of a class whose existence I have conjectured before, but by no means including all the wealthy, who wear their purple and fine linen both gracefully and graciously, fare not more sumptuously than temperately every day, and do a great deal, not only directly by their ready beneficence, but indirectly by their sunny benignity, to light up the gloomy world of Lazarus.”  And though I was but a budding theorist in human nature, and often made mistakes before and afterwards, I never found myself mistaken there.

When Julia came in an hour after, she said to me, as I looked up from my roses and my rose-colored revery, “Katy, you look like an inspired sibyl!  What has come over you?”

“Miss Dudley,” said I.

“What! has she really—­been here?  How I wish I had seen her!  What did she wear?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you.  Wait, I will try.  O yes! it comes back to me;—­a silver-gray shot poplin, or silk, made full, but, I think, quite plain; a large red Cashmere shawl, rather more crimson and less scarlet than they usually are,—­it glowed gloriously out from the gray;—­then some kind of a thin, gray bonnet, with large gray and crimson crape and velvet flowers in it,—­hibiscus or passion-flowers, or really I don’t know what,—­that seemed just to marry the dress to the shawl.”

“Pretty well for you, Katy!  Rather heavy for the season; but I suppose she was afraid of this east wind.  You liked her, then?”

“Very much.”

“So does the Doctor, always.  Some people call her proud; but he says, that is only their way of expressing their view of the fact that she has a good deal to make her so, and more than enough to make them so, if they had it instead of her.”