Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/29

Rh lows, in color a warm, bright blond, and with shorter hairs about the ears and temples which curled up in golden threads. In strange contrast with this brilliant hair were level, dark-brown eyebrows, that were low over large gray eyes. She had the same dark-brown lashes, which grew wide apart and turned back, a rare beauty, and one which imparts an expression of soft, wistful tenderness to the eyes thus encircled.

Here Viola's beauty ended. Her other features were, at least, inoffensive. She was tall and beautifully formed, but in the slenderest mold. To the Californian ideal she was thin. But her movements were distinguished by a supple grace denied to women of a more stately build and proportion. To-night she wore a shirt-waist, washed out from its original pink to a wan flesh-color, and a scanty black stuff skirt, belted with a black ribbon. Gault, with his eyes fixed on the colonel, was aware of the stealthy rearrangement she made of the ribbon round her neck, and the movements of the investigating hand with which she pushed back her loosened hair-pins.

As was her custom, she made little attempt to join in the conversation. The evening settled down into a replica of its predecessors. The fact that Gault was becoming a familiar figure in the bare front parlor did not seem to