tain, and when, a little later, she received an intimation that Currer Bell would call upon her, she did not know whether to expect a gentleman or a lady. It was, therefore, with interest and excitement that she awaited at the appointed hour the arrival of her distinguished visitor.
"Precisely as the time-piece struck six," says Miss Martineau, relating the incident in her Autobiography, "a carriage stopped at the door; and, after a minute of suspense, the footman announced 'Miss Brogden;' whereupon my cousin informed me that it was Miss Brontë; for we had heard the name before, among others, in the way of conjecture. I thought her the smallest creature I had ever seen (except at a fair), and her eyes blazed, as it seemed to me. She glanced quickly round; and my trumpet pointing me out, she held out her hand frankly and pleasantly. I introduced her, of course, to the family; and then came a moment which I had not anticipated. When she was seated by me on the sofa, she cast up at me such a look—so loving, so appealing—that, in connection with her deep mourning dress and the knowledge that she was the sole survivor of her family, I could with the utmost difficulty return her smile, or keep my composure. I should have been heartily glad to cry."
It was perhaps as high a compliment as Miss Martineau ever received, for her society to be thus sought by Charlotte Brontë. She was so painfully shy that, when she spoke in company at all, she would gradually wheel around in her chair until she was seated almost with her back toward the person whom she was addressing.
Miss Brontë was always plain; she considered herself repulsively ugly. Her features were indeed large and irregular, and her mouth a little crooked, but her expression was so animated and intelligent when she talked, that her face became most attractive. Even in secluded Haworth she was not without admirers; she had received
