This young woman might talk
politics, thought her new friend; no male man would call her prater,
while she bore herself with that air. Her eyes--the chaperon noticed it
for the first time--owed some of their remarkable intensity, no doubt,
to short sight. They were large, finely colored and thickly fringed, but
their slightly veiled concentration suggested an habitual, though quite
unconscious _struggle to see_--with that clearness which the mind behind
demanded of them. The complexion was a clear brunette, the cheeks rosy;
the nose was slightly tilted, the mouth fresh and beautiful though
large; and the face of a lovely oval. Altogether, an aspect of rich and
glowing youth: no perfect beauty; but something arresting,
ardent--charged, perhaps over-charged, with personality. Mrs. Colwood
said to herself that life at Beechcote would be no stagnant pool.
While they lingered in the drawing-room before church, she kept Diana
talking. It seemed that Miss Mallory had seen Egypt, India, and Canada,
in the course of her last two years of life with her father. Their
travels had spread over more than a year; and Diana had brought Mr.
Mallory back to the Riviera, only, it appeared, to die, after some eight
months of illness.
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