t straight features,
grey eyes under dark brows, low forehead almost hidden by wavy fair
hair, and a mouth curved and curled into subtle and complicated lines,
was the type loved by Rossetti and Burne-Jones. She had a wonderful fair
complexion, against which her long eyelashes showed, when she looked
down, dark and effective, and though she was rather tall, slim and very
modishly dressed, she never looked like a fashion-plate and had no air
of being a mere mannequin for clothes, but seemed essentially real, with
a suggestion in her personality of a beauty at once pagan and
spiritual--the pagan predominating. Her pictorial appearance had no
doubt made easier the artist's task, and the pale exquisite portrait had
truly been described as a whispering likeness.

Daphne, who was not quite eighteen, was a good deal taller, and more
slender. She had dark brown eyes, smooth dark hair, parted in the
middle, a rather bright colour and features of the classic type. Her
chin was rather long, and she had a brilliant, sudden smile, and all
the attractive freshness and slight abruptness of her age, with an
occasionally subdued air, caused by the shadow that had fallen on their
youth by the death of their beautiful mother. Her gentle grace and touch
of premeditated _naivete_ made her charming. Beyond question she would
be a great success.

"Romer can't go on Thursday," Valentia said, taking the needle and hat
out of her sister's hand and beginning to sew. "I must go and see Harry
and tell him to get some one else. Really, Daphne, you go too far! It's
all very well to be clever with your needle, but you needn't tear a
Lewis hat to pieces and turn it inside out without asking my advice."

"Oh, I wasn't! I was only squashing in the brim and trying to make the
hat smaller. It seems to have got larger since I put it away."

"Don't be perfectly absurd, darling. It's because you've been seeing
smaller hats lately."

"Oh yes, I see. Who's going instead of Romer?"

"How should I know? We'll see."

"It's just as you like, darling," said Daphne in her level voice; "but
in case the American hates me, and I hate him, and Harry's talking to
you all the time, and I'm frightened of the celebrities, isn't anything
going to be done for me?"

"Of course not. What do you want? That Foster boy again? Don't look down
and blush, it makes me sick. All right, perhaps, if there's room. He's a
nice, decorative boy, but remember they don't dance at dinne