When Kate leaned over her uncle's chair, near which he was
sitting, he saw that she was still prettier than he had thought her
before.--There are few girls who to a short-sighted person look
prettier when they come closer; the fact being that the general intent
of the face, which the generalizing effect of the shortness of the
sight reveals, has ordinarily more of beauty in it than has yet been
carried out in detail; so that, as the girl approaches, one face seems
to melt away, and another, less beautiful, to dawn up through it.
But, as I have said, this was not Alec's experience with Kate; for,
whatever it might indicate, she looked prettier when she came nearer.
He found too that her great mass of hair, instead of being, as he had
thought, dull, was in reality full of glints and golden hints, as if
she had twisted up a handful of sunbeams with it in the morning, which,
before night, had faded a little, catching something of the duskiness
and shadowiness of their prison. One thing more he saw--that her
hand--she rested it on the back of the dark chair, and so it had caught
his eye--was small and white; and those were all the qualities Alec was
as yet capable of appreciating in a hand.
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