Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/28

14 the apparition offered meanwhile to her own eyes Rose Armiger had not a particle of doubt: a slim, fair girl who struck her as a light sketch for something larger, a cluster of happy hints with nothing yet quite "put in" but the splendour of the hair and the grace of the clothes—clothes that were not as the clothes of Wilverley. The reflection of these things came back to Jean from a pair of eyes as to which she judged that the extreme lightness of their grey was what made them so strange as to be ugly—a reflection that spread into a sudden smile from a wide, full-lipped mouth, whose regular office, obviously, was to produce the second impression. In a flash of small square white teeth this second impression was produced and the ambiguity that Mrs. Beever had spoken of lighted up—an ambiguity worth all the dull prettiness in the world. Yes, one quite did know: Miss Armiger was strikingly handsome. It thus took her but a few seconds to repudiate every connection with the sombre image Jean had just encountered.

"Excuse my jumping out at you," she said. "I heard a sound—I was expecting a friend." Jean thought her attitude an odd one for the purpose, but