Mrs. Grove was thin--no, he corrected
that impression, she was slight--her face, broad at the temples,
narrowed gracefully to her chin; her eyes were a darker blue than the
velvet; and her skin at once was evenly pale and had a suggestion of
transparent warmth. The slender firm hand she extended, her bearing and
the glimpse of a round throat, had lost none of the slender flexibility
of youth.
"The first thing I must do," she told him in an unsympathetic, almost
harsh, voice, "is to say that I agree with you entirely about this
house. It's beyond speech. But William won't have it touched. Probably
you are not familiar with the stubborn traditions of old New Yorkers.
Of course, when Mrs. Simeon Grove was alive, it was hopeless; but I did
think, when she died, that something could be done. You can see how
wrong I was--William can't be budged."
She was, he silently continued his conclusions, past forty, but by not
more than a year, or a year and a half. All that her signature
suggested was true: she was more forcible, decisive, than he had
expected. Money and place, with an individual authentic strength of
personality, gave her voice its accent of finality, her words their
abruptness, her manner an unending ease.
"Mina said she might be here," Mrs. Grove went on, from an
uncomfortable Jacobean chair, "if something or other happened at the
studio.
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