At every meeting her beauty came home afresh to him with the old thrill of glad surprise . In the intervals of absence it seemed to him that she could not possibly be as beautiful as he remembered her ; and then when they met she seemed even more so . He learned to watch for the undisguised light of welcome that always leaped into her eyes at the sound of his footsteps . She was nearly always there before him and she always showed that she was glad to see him with the frank delight of a child watching for a dear comrade . She was never in the same mood twice . Now she was grave , now gay , now stately , now pensive . But she was always charming . Thrawn and twisted the old Gordon stock might be , but it had at least this one offshoot of perfect grace and symmetry . Her mind and heart , utterly unspoiled of the world , were as beautiful as her face . All the ugliness of existence had passed her by , shrined in her double solitude of upbringing and muteness . She was naturally quick and clever . Delightful little flashes of wit and humour sparkled out occasionally . She could be whimsical -- even charmingly capricious . Sometimes innocent mischief glimmered out in the unfathomable deeps of her blue eyes . Sarcasm , even , was not unknown to her . Now and then she punctured some harmless bubble of a young man 's conceit or masculine superiority with a biting little line of daintily written script . She assimilated the ideas in the books they read , speedily , eagerly , and thoroughly , always seizing on the best and truest , and rejecting the false and spurious and weak with an unfailing intuition at which Eric marvelled . Hers was the spear of Ithuriel , trying out the dross of everything and leaving only the pure gold . In manner and outlook she was still a child . Yet now and again she was as old as Eve .
An expression would leap into her laughing face , a subtle meaning reveal itself XXXXX her smile , that held all the lore of womanhood and all the wisdom of the ages .
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