the beginning of a lasting acquaintance

All that Aurora’s beauty most lacked was richly possessed by Lucy. Delicacy of outline, perfection of feature, purity of tint, all were there; but, while one face dazzled you by its shining splendor, the other impressed you only with a feeble sense of its charms, slow to come, and quick to pass away. There are so many Lucys, but so few Auroras; and while you never could be critical with the one, you were merciless in your scrutiny of the other. Talbot Bulstrode was attracted to Lucy by a vague notion that she was just the good and timid creature who was destined to make him happy; but he looked at her as calmly as if she had been a statue, and was as fully aware of her defects as a sculptor who criticises the work of a rival.
But she was exactly the sort of woman to make a good wife. She had been educated to that end by a careful mother. Purity and goodness had watched over her and hemmed her in from the cradle. She had never seen unseemly sights, or heard unseemly sounds. She was as ignorant as a baby of all the vices and horrors of this big world. She was ladylike, accomplished, well-informed; and if there were a great many others of precisely the same type of graceful womanhood, it was certainly the highest type, and the holiest, and the best.
Later in the evening, when Captain Bulstrode’s phaeton was brought round to the flight of steps in front of the great doors, the little party assembled on the terrace to see the two officers depart, and the banker told his guests how he hoped this visit to Felden would be the beginning of a lasting acquaintance.
“I am going to take Aurora and my niece to Brighton for a month or so,” he said, as he shook hands with the captain, “but on our return you must let us see you as often as possible.”
Talbot bowed, and stammered his thanks for the banker’s cordiality. Aurora and her cousin, Percy Floyd, the young Etonian, had gone down the steps, and were admiring Captain Bulstrode’s thorough-bred bays, and the captain was not a little distracted by the picture the group made in the moonlight.
He never forgot that picture. Aurora, with her coronet of plaits dead black against the purple air, and her silk dress shimmering in the uncertain light, the delicate head of the bay horse visible above her shoulder, and her ringed white hands caressing the animal’s slender ears, while the purblind old mastiff, vaguely jealous, whined complainingly at her side.
How marvellous is the sympathy which exists between some people and the brute creation! I think that horses and dogs understood every word that Aurora said to them — that they worshipped her from the dim depths of their inarticulate souls, and would have willingly gone to death to do her service. Talbot observed all this with an uneasy sense of bewilderment.