The strange woman
spoke first.
"Is that the road to London?" she said.
I looked attentively at her, as she put that singular question to
me. It was then nearly one o'clock. All I could discern
distinctly by the moonlight was a colourless, youthful face,
meagre and sharp to look at about the cheeks and chin; large,
grave, wistfully attentive eyes; nervous, uncertain lips; and
light hair of a pale, brownish-yellow hue. There was nothing
wild, nothing immodest in her manner: it was quiet and self-
controlled, a little melancholy and a little touched by suspicion;
not exactly the manner of a lady, and, at the same time, not the
manner of a woman in the humblest rank of life. The voice, little
as I had yet heard of it, had something curiously still and
mechanical in its tones, and the utterance was remarkably rapid.
She held a small bag in her hand: and her dress--bonnet, shawl,
and gown all of white--was, so far as I could guess, certainly not
composed of very delicate or very expensive materials. Her figure
was slight, and rather above the average height--her gait and
actions free from the slightest approach to extravagance. This
was all that I could observe of her in the dim light and under the
perplexingly strange circumstances of our meeting.
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