If you went out towards the north side of the town, there was a house
there on the first floor of which you were very welcome, where a
handsome and well-bred couple once a week received young men for the
sake of the lady's young niece. The master of the house was a lean and
silent man, who always looked handsome, and was always dignified; he had
honourably filled an exalted official post. His wife had been very
attractive in her youth, had grown white while still quite young, and
was now a handsome woman with snow-white curls clustering round her
fresh-coloured face. To me she bore, as it were, an invisible mark upon
her forehead, for when quite a young girl she had been loved by a great
man. She was sincerely kind and genuinely pleasant, but the advantage of
knowing her was not great; for that she was too restless a hostess. When
it was her At Home she never remained long enough with one group of
talkers properly to understand what was being discussed. After about a
minute she hurried off to the opposite corner of the drawing-room, said
a few words there, and then passed on to look after the tea.
It was neither to see her nor her husband that many of the young people
congregated at the house. It was for the sake of the eighteen-year-old
fairy maiden, her niece, whose face was one to haunt a man's dreams.
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