He talked
like quite a good book--a book not in the least cheaply
sentimental. You see, I suppose he regarded me not so much as a
man. I had to be regarded as a woman or a solicitor. Anyhow, it
burst out of him on that horrible night. And then, next morning, he
took me over to the Assizes and I saw how, in a perfectly calm
and business-like way, he set to work to secure a verdict of not
guilty for a poor girl, the daughter of one of his tenants, who had
been accused of murdering her baby. He spent two hundred
pounds on her defence . . . Well, that was Edward Ashburnham.
I had forgotten about his eyes. They were as blue as the sides of a
certain type of box of matches. When you looked at them
carefully you saw that they were perfectly honest, perfectly
straightforward, perfectly, perfectly stupid. But the brick pink of
his complexion, running perfectly level to the brick pink of his
inner eyelids, gave them a curious, sinister expression--like a
mosaic of blue porcelain set in pink china. And that chap, coming
into a room, snapped up the gaze of every woman in it, as
dexterously as a conjurer pockets billiard balls. It was most
amazing. You know the man on the stage who throws up sixteen
balls at once and they all drop into pockets all over his person, on
his shoulders, on his heels, on the inner side of his sleeves; and he
stands perfectly still and does nothing.
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