asures. She was of some thirty-five years of age, taller than was
then common and perhaps stouter than is now enjoined. She had small
kind grey eyes, a considerable quantity of very light-brown hair and a
smiling well-formed mouth. She was dressed in a lustreless black
satin gown with a short train. Disposed about her neck was a blue
handkerchief, and over this handkerchief, in many convolutions, a string
of amber beads. Her appearance was singular; she was large yet somehow
vague, mature yet undeveloped. Her manner of addressing us spoke of all
sorts of deep diffidences. Searle, I think, had prefigured to himself
some proud cold beauty of five-and-twenty; he was relieved at finding
the lady timid and not obtrusively fair. He at once had an excellent
tone.

"We're distant cousins, I believe. I'm happy to claim a relationship
which you're so good as to remember. I hadn't counted on your knowing
anything about me."

"Perhaps I've done wrong." And Miss Searle blushed and smiled anew. "But
I've always known of there being people of our blood in America, and
have often wondered and asked about them--without ever learning much.
To-day, when this card was brought me and I understood a Clement Searle
to be under our roof as a stranger, I felt I ought to do something. But,
you know, I hardly knew what. My brother's in London. I've done what I
think he would have done. Welcome as a cousin." And with a resolution
that ceased to be awkward she put out her hand.

"I'm welcome indeed if he would have done it half so graciously!" Again
Searle, taking her hand, acquitted himself beautifully.

"You've seen what there is, I think," Miss Searle went on. "Perhaps now
you'll have luncheon." We followed her into a small breakfast-room where
a deep bay window opened on the mossy flags of a terrace. Here, for some
moments, she remained dumb and abashed, as if resting from a measurable
effort. Searle too had ceased to overflow, so that I had to relieve the
silence. It was of course easy to descant on the beauties of park and
mansion, and as I did so I observed our hostess. She had no arts, no
impulses nor graces--scarce even any manners; she was queerly, almost
frowsily dressed; yet she pleased me well. She had an antique sweetness,
a homely fragrance of old traditions. To be so simple, among those
complicated treasures, so pampered and yet so fresh, so modest and yet
so placid, told of just the spacious leisure in which Searle and I had
im