Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/34

20 the good lady from Eastmead. She greatly admired her, but in that instant, the first of seeing her at Bounds, she perceived once for all how the difference of the setting made another thing of the gem. Short and solid, with rounded corners and full supports, her hair very black and very flat, her eyes very small for the amount of expression they could show, Mrs. Beever was so "early Victorian" as to be almost prehistoric—was constructed to move amid massive mahogany and sit upon banks of Berlin-wool. She was like an odd volume, "sensibly" bound, of some old magazine. Jean knew that the great social event of her younger years had been her going to a fancy-ball in the character of an Andalusian, an incident of which she still carried a memento in the shape of a hideous fan. Jean was so constituted that she also knew, more dimly but at the end of five minutes, that the elegance at Mr. Bream's was slightly provincial. It made none the less a medium in which Mrs. Beever looked superlatively local. That indeed in turn caused Jean to think the old place still more of a "love."

"1 believe our poor friend feels rather down," Miss