pid but not frequent, an
obstructive thought causing sometimes a sudden halt in the midst of a
stream of words. But the features by which a cool observer would have
singled her out from others in his memory when asking himself what she
was like, was a peculiar gaze into imaginary far-away distance when
making a quiet remark to a partner--not with contracted eyes like a
seafaring man, but with an open full look--a remark in which little words
in a low tone were made to express a great deal, as several single
gentlemen afterwards found.

The production of dance-music when the criticizing stage among the
dancers has passed, and they have grown full of excitement and animal
spirits, does not require much concentration of thought in the producers
thereof; and desultory conversation accordingly went on between Faith and
her brother from time to time.

'Kit,' she said on one occasion, 'are you looking at the way in which the
flowers are fastened to the leaves?--taking a mean advantage of being at
the back of the tapestry? You cannot think how you stare at them.'

'I was looking through them--certainly not at them. I have a feeling of
being moved about like a puppet in the hands of a person who legally can
be nothing to me.'

'That charming woman with the shining bunch of hair and convolvuluses?'

'Yes: it is through her that we are brought here, and through her writing
that poem, "Cancelled Words," that the book was sent me, and through the
accidental renewal of acquaintance between us on Anglebury Heath, that
she wrote the poem. I was, however, at the moment you spoke, thinking
more particularly of the little teacher whom Ethelberta must have
commissioned to send the book to me; and why that girl was chosen to do
it.'

'There may be a hundred reasons. Kit, I have never yet seen her look
once this way.'

Christopher had certainly not yet received look or gesture from her; but
his time came. It was while he was for a moment outside the recess, and
he caught her in the act. She became slightly confused, turned aside,
and entered into conversation with a neighbour.

It was only a look, and yet what a look it was! One may say of a look
that it is capable of division into as many species, genera, orders, and
classes, as the animal world itself. Christopher saw Ethelberta
Petherwin's performance in this kind--the well-known spark of light upon
the well-known depths of mystery--and felt something going out of him
w