the keys upon them.

The only ornaments now, were the pale roses, the books, and, above her
writing-desk, a little picture that she had brought with her, a
water-colour sketch of her old home painted by her mother many years
ago.

So the room looked very bare. It almost looked like the parlour of a
convent; with a little more austerity, whitened walls and a few thick
velvet and gilt lives of the saints on the tables, the likeness would
have been complete. The house itself was conventual in aspect, and Lady
Channice, as she stood there in the quiet light at the window, looked
not unlike a nun, were it not for her crown of pale gold hair that shone
in the dark room and seemed, like the roses, to bring into it the
brightness of an outer, happier world.

She was a tall woman of forty, her ample form, her wide bosom, the
falling folds of her black dress, her loosely girdled waist, suggesting,
with the cloistral analogies, the mournful benignity of a bereaved
Madonna. Seen as she stood there, leaning her head to watch her son's
approach, she was an almost intimidating presence, black, still, and
stately. But when the door opened and the young man came in, when, not
moving to meet him, she turned her head with a slight smile of welcome,
all intimidating impressions passed away. Her face, rather, as it
turned, under its crown of gold, was the intimidated face. It was
curiously young, pure, flawless, as though its youth and innocence had
been preserved in some crystal medium of prayer and silence; and if the
nun-like analogies failed in their awe-inspiring associations, they
remained in the associations of unconscious pathos and unconscious
appeal. Amabel Channice's face, like her form, was long and delicately
ample; its pallor that of a flower grown in shadow; the mask a little
over-large for the features. Her eyes were small, beautifully shaped,
slightly slanting upwards, their light grey darkened under golden
lashes, the brows definitely though palely marked. Her mouth was pale
coral-colour, and the small upper lip, lifting when she smiled as she
was smiling now, showed teeth of an infantile, milky whiteness. The
smile was charming, timid, tentative, ingratiating, like a young girl's,
and her eyes were timid, too, and a little wild.

"Have you had a good read?" she asked her son. He had a book in his
hand.

"Very, thanks. But it is getting chilly, down there in the meadow. And
what a lot of frogs there are in the ditch