Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/117

 cadence of far distances. It was a voice, Jill felt, that could only have grown under such a sky and beside such a river. 'Let us sit down for a little,' she suggested when they reached the dyke. And they sat down on the warm, sunny stones and Jill contemplated her companion for some moments of silence.

In her demeanour, her gestures, her tones—as Jill was later on to hear them—of abrupt command, her impetuous, un-self-conscious speech, Marthe Ludérac gave an impression of noble breeding, while something in her aspect recalled Madame de Lamouderie's allusions to peasant origins. There was an archaic simplicity in the straight lines of her body, the contour of her braided head; a directness almost primitive in her gaze. Her eyebrows lay far apart, set high above the clearly drawn dark eyes, and this spacious setting gave to these a striking potency and candour. She had the small straight nose of the Latin race, the small firm chin, the classic oval of brow and cheek. Her mouth in repose was austere and beautiful, but her smile revealed small white teeth and a space of gum above them, and had in it a sudden helplessness like that of a very young child. Her smile, Jill felt, from the view of beauty, was her defect; yet she would not have had it otherwise. It brought her near as nothing else in her appearance did; and contemplating her with absorbed attention, she felt her to be like a strange bird whose life is passed in high thick forests but that may, through one small, confiding habit, be tamed into one's hand. She looked back at Jill while