estigated
each other. As he lolled on the bench with folded arms and straw hat
tilted back from his forehead she, glancing side-long, as her manner
was, saw a sunburnt aquiline nose, a moustache of a lighter brown than
the visage which it decorated, a lean, strong jaw, and a muscular neck.
His forehead, square and impending, was as white as ivory in comparison
with the face below; his hair, in accordance with the fashion introduced
by the late war, was cropped close. But what especially moved Miss Grace
were those long, lazy blue eyes, which seemed to tolerate everything,
but to be interested in nothing,--hardly even in her. Now, Grace could
not help knowing she was a pretty girl, and it was somewhat of a novelty
to her that Freeman should appear so indifferent. It would have been
difficult to devise a better opportunity than this to monopolize
masculine admiration, and she fell to speculating as to what sort of
an experience Mr. Freeman must have had, so to panoply him against her
magic. On the other hand, she was the recipient of whatever attentions
he could bring himself to detach from the horizon-line, or from his
own thoughts (which appeared to amount, practically, to about the same
thing). She had no other rivals; and a woman will submit amiably to a
good deal of indifference, provided she be assured that no other woman
is enjoying what she lacks.

Freeman, for his part, had nothing to complain of. Grace Parsloe was
a singularly pretty girl. Singular properly qualifies her. She was not
like the others,--by which phrase he epitomized the numerous comely
young women whom he had, at various times and in several countries,
attended, teased, and kissed. Both physically and mentally, she was very
fine-wrought. Her bones were small; her body and limbs were slender, but
beautifully fashioned. She was supple and vigorous. Grace is a product
of brain as well as an effect of bodily symmetry: Grace had the quality
on both counts. She answered to one's conception of Mahomet's houris,
assuming that the conception is not of a fat person. Her head was small,
but well proportioned,--compact as to the forehead, rather broad across
the cheek-bones, thence tapering to the chin. Her eyes were blue, but of
an Eastern strangeness of shape and setting; they were subject to great
and sudden changes of expression, depending, apparently, on the varying
state of her emotions, and betraying an intensity more akin to the
Oriental temperament t