Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/117

Rh presumptuous. Gabriel fell to talking with Nick Dormer, and Peter addressed himself to Mrs. Rooth. There was no use as yet in saying anything to the girl; she was too scared even to hear. Mrs. Rooth, with her shawl fluttering about her, nestled against her daughter, putting out her hand to take one of Miriam's, soothingly. She had pretty, silly, near-sighted eyes, a long, thin nose and an upper lip which projected over the under as an ornamental cornice rests on its support. "So much depends—really everything!" she said in answer to some sociable observation of Sherringham's. "It's either this," and she rolled her eyes expressively about the room, "or it's—I don't know too much what!"

"Perhaps we're too many," Peter hazarded, to her daughter. "But really, you'll find, after you fairly begin, that you'll do better with four or five."

Before she answered she turned her head and lifted her fine eyes. The next instant he saw they were full of tears. The word she spoke, however, though uttered in a deep, serious tone, had not the note of sensibility: "Oh, I don't care for you!" He laughed at this, declared it was very well said and that if she could give Madame Carré such a specimen as that—! The actress came in before he had finished his phrase, and he observed the way the girl slowly got up to meet her, hanging her head a little and looking at her from under her brows. There was no sentiment in her face—only a kind of vacancy of terror which had not even the merit of being fine of its kind, for it seemed stupid and superstitious. Yet the head was good, he perceived at the same moment; it was strong and salient and made to tell at a distance. Madame