xceeding slimness was curiously graceful.
Emily remembered having read novels whose heroines were described as
"undulating." Mrs. Osborn was undulating. Her long, drooping, and dense
black eyes were quite unlike other girls' eyes. Emily had never seen
anything like them. And she had such a lonely, slow, shy way of lifting
them to look at people. She was obliged to look up at tall Emily. She
seemed a schoolgirl as she stood near her. Emily was the kind of
mistaken creature whose conscience, awakening to unnecessary remorses,
causes its owner at once to assume all the burdens which Fate has laid
upon the shoulders of others. She began to feel like a criminal herself,
irrespective of the shape of her skull. Her own inordinate happiness and
fortune had robbed this unoffending young couple. She wished that it had
not been so, and vaguely reproached herself without reasoning the matter
out to a conclusion. At all events, she was remorsefully sympathetic in
her mental attitude towards Mrs. Osborn, and being sure that she was
frightened of her husband's august relative, felt nervous herself
because Lord Walderhurst bore himself with undated courtesy and kept his
monocle fixed in his eye throughout the interview. If he had let it drop
and allowed it to dangle in an unbiassed manner from its cord, Emily
would have felt more comfortable, because she was sure his demeanour
would have appeared a degree more encouraging to the Osborns.

"Are you glad to be in England again?" she asked Mrs. Osborn.

"I never was here before," answered the young woman. "I have never been
anywhere but in India."

In the course of the conversation she explained that she had not been a
delicate child, and also conveyed that even if she had been one, her
people could not have afforded to send her home. Instinct revealed to
Emily that she had not had many of the good things of life, and that she
was not a creature of buoyant spirits. The fact that she had spent a
good many hours of most of her young days in reflecting on her ill-luck
had left its traces on her face, particularly in the depths of her
slow-moving, black eyes.

They had come, it appeared, in the course of duty, to pay their respects
to the woman who was to be their destruction. To have neglected to do so
would have made them seem to assume an indiscreet attitude towards the
marriage.

"They can't like it, of course," Lady Maria summed them up afterwards,
"but they have made up their minds