There was fine panelling in the dining-room and a great fireplace and
a few family portraits. The service upon the table was shabby and the
dinner was not a bounteous meal. Lady Anstruthers in her girlish, gauzy
dress and looking too small for her big, high-backed chair tried to talk
rapidly, and every few minutes forgot herself and sank into silence,
with her eyes unconsciously fixed upon her sister's face. Ughtred
watched Betty also, and with a hungry questioning. The man-servant in
the worn livery was not a sufficiently well-trained and experienced
domestic to make any effort to keep his eyes from her. He was young
enough to be excited by an innovation so unusual as the presence of a
young and beautiful person surrounded by an unmistakable atmosphere of
ease and fearlessness. He had been talking of her below stairs and
felt that he had failed in describing her. He had found himself barely
supported by the suggestion of a housemaid that sometimes these dresses
that looked plain had been made in Paris at expensive places and had
cost "a lot." He furtively examined the dress which looked plain, and
while he admitted that for some mysterious reason it might represent
expensiveness, it was not the dress which was the secret of the effect,
but a something, not altogether mere good looks, expressed by the
wearer.
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