Somehow or other she made him think more of home than any
other person or thing he met with; and he could not but feel that she was
in strange contrast with everything about her. She was no beauty; very
piquant; very pleasing; in some points of view and at some moments
pretty; always good-humored, but somewhat too self-possessed for
Middleton's taste. It struck him that she had talked with him as if she
had some knowledge of him and of the purposes with which he was there;
not that this was expressed, but only implied by the fact that, on
looking back to what had passed, he found many strange coincidences in
what she had said with what he was thinking about.
He perplexed himself much with thinking whence this young woman had come,
where she belonged, and what might be her history; when, the next day, he
again saw her, not this time rambling on foot, but seated in an open
barouche with a young lady. Middleton lifted his hat to her, and she
nodded and smiled to him; and it appeared to Middleton that a
conversation ensued about him with the young lady, her companion. Now,
what still more interested him was the fact that, on the panel of the
barouche were the arms of the family now in possession of the estate of
Smithell's; so that the young lady, his new acquaintance, or the young
lady, her seeming friend, one or the other, was the sister of the present
owner of that estate.
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