showed at all under her traveller’s hat, but her mouth had gained in sweetness and power, and in the creamy pallor of her face—so different, as it had always been different, from Sylvia’s rose-and-whiteness!—her eyes were astonishing. Even as a child she had had memorable eyes.

[27]They were beautifully shaped, deep-set eyes, of the living grayness of star sapphires. In odd contrast to the warm brunette skin and the fair hair, they were black-fringed, and the brows above them were black and straight. This had made the child look odd, pixy-like, years ago, with her flying fair hair and nervous little forehead, but it made this serene girl superb.

[27]

Best of all, David thought, covertly studying her, as she sat upon the stiff-backed little chair Flora indicated, between Flora’s own armchair and David’s; best of all were her contours, the making of her. Child of little cry-baby Aunt Lily and the peripatetic agent she might be, but she was splendidly fine in her outlines and textures for all that. Her hands were fine, white, not too small, beautifully shaped. Her ankles were fine, her head nicely set and nicely poised when she moved it quickly to look at him or at her aunt. The shape of her face was fine, the cheek-bones a thought too high, the upper lip a shade too short, but the modelling of the mouth and temples and the clean cut of the chin were perfect. Her big teeth were white and glistening, her fair hair controlled to neatness in spite of its rebel tendrils, and brushed to a goldeny lustre. Her voice, husky and sweet, and lower than that of most women, was most distinctive of all. David wished that Aunt Flora would show something a little more motherly, a little more hospitable in her welcome—would at least ask Gabrielle to take off her hat.

But Flora, for her, was not ungracious.

“You are early, Gabrielle,” she said, kindly. “David had said something of meeting you in Crowchester if you came down on the two o’clock train.”

[28]“I came on a special train this morning. We stopped at Worcester, with some girls who live there.”

[28]

“You’re not tired?”

“Well.” The white teeth flashed. “Rumpled and train-dusty and a little confused. We got into Montreal—what is to-day?—day before yesterday. Yesterday we were on the train, last night in the Boston convent.”

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