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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
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