Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. II, 1889.djvu/13

 Reddened by the rays of the fire, her features had a splendid savagery which seemed strangely at discord with the paltry surroundings amid which she sat; her eyes just now were gleaming with a crafty and cruel speculation which would have become those of a barbarian in ambush. I wonder how it came about that her strain, after passing through the basest conditions of modern life, had thus reverted to a type of ancestral exuberance.

“If only he doesn’t hear about the old man or the girl from somebody!” said Mrs. Peckover. “I’ve been afraid of it ever since he come into the ’ouse. There’s so many people might tell him. You’ll have to come round him sharp, Clem.”

The mother was dressed as her kind are wont to be on Sunday morning,—that is to say, not dressed at all, but hung about with coarse garments, her hair in unbeautiful disarray. Clem, on the other hand, seemed to have devoted much attention to her morning toilet; she wore a dark dress trimmed with