ld lady having, for the above reason, vacated it by the second door as
they entered by the first.

Knight went to the chimney-piece, and carelessly surveyed two portraits
on ivory.

'Though these pink ladies had very rudimentary features, judging by what
I see here,' he observed, 'they had unquestionably beautiful heads of
hair.'

'Yes; and that is everything,' said Elfride, possibly conscious of her
own, possibly not.

'Not everything; though a great deal, certainly.'

'Which colour do you like best?' she ventured to ask.

'More depends on its abundance than on its colour.'

'Abundances being equal, may I inquire your favourite colour?'

'Dark.'

'I mean for women,' she said, with the minutest fall of countenance, and
a hope that she had been misunderstood.

'So do I,' Knight replied.

It was impossible for any man not to know the colour of Elfride's hair.
In women who wear it plainly such a feature may be overlooked by men not
given to ocular intentness. But hers was always in the way. You saw her
hair as far as you could see her sex, and knew that it was the palest
brown. She knew instantly that Knight, being perfectly aware of this,
had an independent standard of admiration in the matter.

Elfride was thoroughly vexed. She could not but be struck with the
honesty of his opinions, and the worst of it was, that the more they
went against her, the more she respected them. And now, like a reckless
gambler, she hazarded her last and best treasure. Her eyes: they were
her all now.

'What coloured eyes do you like best, Mr. Knight?' she said slowly.

'Honestly, or as a compliment?'

'Of course honestly; I don't want anybody's compliment!'

And yet Elfride knew otherwise: that a compliment or word of approval
from that man then would have been like a well to a famished Arab.

'I prefer hazel,' he said serenely.

She had played and lost again.

Chapter XIX

'Love was in the next degree.'

Knight had none of those light familiarities of speech which, by
judicious touches of epigrammatic flattery, obliterate a woman's
recollection of the speaker's abstract opinions. So no more was said by
either on the subject of hair, eyes, or development. Elfride's mind
had been impregnated with sentiments of her own smallness to an
uncomfortable degree of distinctness, and her discomfort was visible in
her face. The whole tendency of the conversation latterly had been to
quietly but surely disparage