One day Phemy went to Castle Weelset to see her aunt, and, walking down the garden to find her, met the young laird.

 

Through respect for the memory of his father, he had just received from the East India Company a commission in his father’s regiment¹; and having in about six weeks to pass the slight examination required, and then sail to join it, had come to see his mother and bid her goodbye. He was a youth no longer, but a handsome young fellow, with a pale face and a rather weary, therefore what some would call an interesting look. For many months he had been leading an idle life.

 

He lifted his hat to Phemy, looked again, and recognised her. They had been friends when she was a child, but since he saw her last she had grown a young woman. She was gliding² past him with a pretty bow, and a prettier blush and smile, when he stopped and held out his hand.

 

‘It’s not possible!’ he said; ‘you can’t be little Phemy!—Yet you must be!—Why, you’re a grown lady! To think how you used to sit on my knee, and stroke my face! How is your father?’

 

Phemy murmured a shy answer, a little goose but blushing a very flamingo³. In her heart she saw before her the very man for her hero. A woman’s hero gives some measure, not of what she is, hardly of what she would like to be, but of what she would like to pass for: here was the ideal for which Phemy had so long been waiting, and wherein consisted his glory? In youth, position, and good looks! She gazed up at him with a mixture of shyness and boldness not uncommon⁴ in persons of her silly kind, and Francis not only saw but felt that she was an unusually pretty girl: although he had long ceased to admire his mother, he still admired the sort of beauty she once had. He saw also that she was very prettily⁵ dressed, and, being one of those men who, imagining themselves gentlemen, feel at liberty to take liberties with women socially their inferiors, he plucked a pheasant-eye-narcissus in the border, and said—at the same time taking the leave he asked,—

 

‘Let me finish your dress by adding this to it! Have you got a pin?—There!—all you wanted to make you just perfect!’

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