perhaps because of something really remarkable in her. She had black hair and eager black eyes, and was thin, and had a scar upon her lip. It was an old scar — I should rather call it seam, for it was not discoloured, and had healed years ago — which had once cut through her mouth, downward towards the chin, but was now barely visible across the table, except above and on her upper lip, the shape of which it had altered.

I concluded in my own mind that she was about thirty years of age, and that she wished to be married. She was a little dilapidated — like a house — with having been so long to let; yet had, as I have said, an appearance of good looks. Her thinness seemed to be the effect of some wasting fire within her, which found a vent in her gaunt eyes.