Apperthwaite's roof; and
I wondered if the books were a fair mirror of Miss Apperthwaite's mind
(I had been told that Mrs. Apperthwaite had a daughter). Mrs.
Apperthwaite herself, in her youth, might have sat to an illustrator of
Scott or Bulwer. Even now you could see she had come as near being
romantically beautiful as was consistently proper for such a timid,
gentle little gentlewoman as she was. Reduced, by her husband's
insolvency (coincident with his demise) to "keeping boarders," she did
it gracefully, as if the urgency thereto were only a spirit of quiet
hospitality. It should be added in haste that she set an excellent
table.
Moreover, the guests who gathered at her board were of a very attractive
description, as I decided the instant my eye fell upon the lady who sat
opposite me at lunch. I knew at once that she was Miss Apperthwaite, she
"went so," as they say, with her mother; nothing could have been more
suitable. Mrs. Apperthwaite was the kind of woman whom you would expect
to have a beautiful daughter, and Miss Apperthwaite more than fulfilled
her mother's promise.
I guessed her to be more than Juliet Capulet's age, indeed, yet still
between that and the perfect age of woman. She was of a larger, fuller,
more striking type than Mrs. Apperthwaite, a bolder type, one might put
it--though she might have been a great deal bolder than Mrs.
Apperthwaite without being bold.
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