ve by exhibiting
to an influx of visitors the local talent for dramatic recitation, and
provincial towns trying to be lively are the dullest of dull things.

Little towns are like little children in this respect, that they
interest most when they are enacting native peculiarities unconscious
of beholders. Discovering themselves to be watched they attempt to
be entertaining by putting on an antic, and produce disagreeable
caricatures which spoil them.

The weather-stained clock-face in the low church tower standing at the
intersection of the three chief streets was expressing half-past two
to the Town Hall opposite, where the much talked-of reading from
Shakespeare was about to begin. The doors were open, and those persons
who had already assembled within the building were noticing the entrance
of the new-comers--silently criticizing their dress--questioning the
genuineness of their teeth and hair--estimating their private means.

Among these later ones came an exceptional young maiden who glowed amid
the dulness like a single bright-red poppy in a field of brown stubble.
She wore an elegant dark jacket, lavender dress, hat with grey strings
and trimmings, and gloves of a colour to harmonize. She lightly walked
up the side passage of the room, cast a slight glance around, and
entered the seat pointed out to her.

The young girl was Cytherea Graye; her age was now about eighteen.
During her entry, and at various times whilst sitting in her seat and
listening to the reader on the platform, her personal appearance formed
an interesting subject of study for several neighbouring eyes.

Her face was exceedingly attractive, though artistically less perfect
than her figure, which approached unusually near to the standard of
faultlessness. But even this feature of hers yielded the palm to the
gracefulness of her movement, which was fascinating and delightful to an
extreme degree.

Indeed, motion was her speciality, whether shown on its most extended
scale of bodily progression, or minutely, as in the uplifting of
her eyelids, the bending of her fingers, the pouting of her lip. The
carriage of her head--motion within motion--a glide upon a glide--was
as delicate as that of a magnetic needle. And this flexibility and
elasticity had never been taught her by rule, nor even been acquired by
observation, but, nullo cultu, had naturally developed itself with her
years. In childhood, a stone or stalk in the way, which had been the