"I'll be your father-confessor to-day," said a black-eyed young
man, twirling his mustache.

"You, Mr. Sibely? You would lead me into more naughtiness than you
would help me out of, twice over. For my confessor I would choose
an ancient man who had had his dinner. What a comfortable belief
it is, to be sure! All one has to do is to buzz one's sins through
a grating (that is like an indefinite number of key-holes) to
a dozing old gentleman inside, and then away with a heart like a
feather, to load up again. I'd bless the man who could convert me
to a Papist."

But she hated the man who had made her feel the need of absolution,
and who seemed an inseparable part of all her disagreeable experiences.
Although he appeared to avoid any locality in which she remained,
she observed his eyes turned towards her more than once before the
day closed, and it exasperated her almost beyond all endurance to
believe that their expression was only that of contempt.

She might have been a little better pleased, perhaps, if she had
known that she made the artist almost as uncomfortable as herself.
Never before had there seemed to him so great a contrast between
her beauty and herself, her features and her face. The latter could
not fail to excite his increased disgust, while the former was so
great that he found himself becoming resolutely bent on redeeming
them from what seemed a horrid profanation. In accordance with
one of his characteristics, the more difficult the project seemed,
the more obstinately fixed became his purpose to discover whether
she had a mind of sufficient calibre to transform her into what she
might be, in contrast with what she was. The more he saw of her