his time seventeen, although her mother dressed
her to look younger, and even then overdressed her like a toy. It was of
a piece with the nature of the girl that, in this matter as in the rest,
she made no protest. She foresaw the scene, the useless scene, which
would follow upon her protest, exclamations against her ingratitude,
abuse for her impertinence, and very likely a facile shower of tears at
the end; and her dignity forbade her to enter upon it. She just let her
mother dress her as she chose, and she withdrew just a little more into
the secret chamber of her dreams. She sat now looking steadily out of the
window, with her eyes uplifted and aloof, in a fashion which had become
natural to her, and her mother was seized with a pang of envy at the
girl's beauty. For beauty Sylvia Thesiger had, uncommon in its quality
rather than in its degree. From the temples to the round point of her
chin the contour of her face described a perfect oval. Her forehead was
broad and low and her hair, which in color was a dark chestnut, parted in
the middle, whence it rippled in two thick daring waves to the ears, a
fashion which noticeably became her, and it was gathered behind into a
plait which lay rather low upon the nape of her neck. Her eyes were big,
of a dark gray hue and very quiet in their scrutiny; her mouth, small and
provoking. It provoked, when still, with the promise of a very winning
smile, and the smile itself was not so frequent but that it provoked a
desire to summon it to her lips again. It had a way of hesitating, as
though Sylvia were not sure whether she would smile or not; and when she
had made up her mind, it dimpled her cheeks and transfigured her whole
face, and revealed in her tenderness and a sense of humor. Her complexion
was pale, but clear, her figure was slender and active, but without
angularities, and she was of the middle height. Yet the quality which the
eye first remarked in her was not so much her beauty, as a certain
purity, a look almost of the Madonna, a certainty, one might say, that
even in the circle in which she moved, she had kept herself unspotted
from the world.

Thus she looked as she sat by the carriage window. But as the train drew
near to Amberieu, the air brightened and the sunlight ministered to her
beauty like a careful handmaid, touching her pale cheeks to a rosy
warmth, giving a luster to her hair, and humaning her to a smile. Sylvia
sat forward a little, as though to meet the