From Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett

At six 0' clock he was back at the shop from his tea. It was a wet chill night. He said to himself that Hilda could not be expected to come on such a night. But he expected her. Now at any instant she might arrive. The shop door opened and simultaneously his heart ceased to beat. But the person who came in, puffing and snorting, was his father, who stood within the shop while shaking his soaking umbrella over the exterior porch. At five minutes to seven he was miserable; he had decided to hope until five minutes to seven. He made it to seven in despair. Then there were signs of a figure behind the misty glass of the door. The door opened. It could not be she! Impossible that it should be she! But it was she; she had the air of being a miracle.

He has a glimpse of her face as, with a little tightening of the lips, she threw back her hood. Yes, she was alone. No Janet! No Alicia! How had she managed it? What had she said to the Orgreaves? That she should come alone, and in the November rain, in the night, affected him deeply. It gave her the quality of a heroine of high adventure. It was as though she had set sail unaided, in a frail skiff, on a formidable ocean, to meet him. She came towards him, her face sedately composed. She wore a small hat, a veil, and a mackintosh, and black gloves that were splashed with wet. Certainly she was a practical woman. She had said she would come, and she had come, sensibly, but how charmingly protected against the shocking conditions of the journey. There is naught charming in a mackintosh. And yet there she was, in this mackintosh! …Something in the contrast between its harshness and her fragility…The veil was supremely charming. She had half lifted it, exposing her mouth; the upper part of her flushed face was caged behind the bars of the veil; behind those bars her eyes mysteriously gleamed… Spanish!…No exaggeration in all this! He felt every bit of it honestly, as he stood at the counter in thrilled expectancy. By virtue of his impassioned curiosity, the terraces of Grenada and the mantillas of senoritas were not more romantic than he had made his father's shop and her dripping mackintosh.

And then the clear tone of her voice fell on the listening shop: 'Good evening, Mr Clayhanger. What a night isn't it? I hope I'm not too late.' ..They shook hands. He suggested that she should remove her mackintosh. She consented. He had no idea that the effect of the removal of the mackintosh would be so startling as it was. She stood intimately revealed in her frock. The soaking mackintosh was formal and defensive; the frock was intimate and acquiescent.

...

Afterwards, he could recall her visit only in fragments. The next fragment that he recollected was the last. She stood outside the door in her still damp mackintosh, the rain beating heavily on her hood. He was on the step, she was on the pavement, so that he looked down at her with the sodden, light-reflecting slope of Duck Square for a background. 'Please don't come out here. You've got a cold and you'll make it worse and this isn't the end of Winter, it's the beginning,' she enjoined, half in entreaty, half in command. Her solicitude thrilled him.

…

'I shall expect you tomorrow about three.'
Thank you,' she said simply. 'I'll come. Now do go in.' She vanished round the corner into the enveloping rain. All the evening he neither read nor spoke.

Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett Book II, Chapter XIX 'Curiosity'

(Extracts provided by Penelope)