- even at fifty you will not be
repulsive.«
    »Miss Mann did not make herself, or tune her voice, Robert.«
    »Nature made her in the mood in which she makes her briars and thorns;
whereas for the creation of some women, she reserves the May morning hours, when
with light and dew she woos the primrose from the turf, and the lily from the
wood-moss.«
 
Ushered into Miss Mann's little parlour, Caroline found her, as she always found
her, surrounded by perfect neatness, cleanliness, and comfort; (after all, is it
not a virtue in old maids that solitude rarely makes them negligent or
disorderly?) no dust on her polished furniture, none on her carpet, fresh
flowers in the vase on her table, a bright fire in the grate. She herself sat
primly and somewhat grimly-tidy in a cushioned rocking-chair, her hands busied
with some knitting: this was her favourite work, as it required the least
exertion. She scarcely rose as Caroline entered; to avoid excitement was one of
Miss Mann's aims in life: she had been composing herself ever since she came
down in the morning, and had just attained a certain lethargic state of
tranquillity when the visiter's knock at the door startled her, and undid her
day's work. She was scarcely pleased, therefore, to see Miss Helstone: she
received her with reserve, bade her be seated with austerity, and when she had
got her placed opposite, she fixed her with her eye.
    This was no ordinary doom - to be fixed with Miss Mann's eye. Robert Moore
had undergone it once, and had never forgotten the circumstance.
    He considered it quite equal to anything Medusa could do: he professed to
doubt whether, since that infliction, his flesh had been quite what it was
before, - whether there was not something stony in its texture. The gaze had had
such an effect on him as to drive him promptly from the apartment and house; it
had even sent him straightway up to the Rectory, where he had appeared in
Caroline's presence with a very queer face, and amazed her by demanding a
cousinly salute on the spot, to rectify a damage that had been done him.
    Certainly Miss Mann had a formidable eye for one of the softer sex: it was
prominent, and showed a great deal of the white, and looked as steadily, as
unwinkingly, at you as if it were a steel ball soldered in her head; and when,
while looking, she began to