round in outline and not over prominent; and the slender
throat was very delicate and feminine. Only in the dark-blue eyes there
was still that unabashed, quick glance and long-abiding straightness,
and innocent hardness, and the unconscious selfishness of the
uncontaminated.

Standing on her feet, she would have seemed rather tall than short,
though really but of average height. Seated, she looked tall, and her
glance was a little downward to most people's eyes. Just now she was too
thin, and seemed taller than she was. But the fresh light was already in
the young white skin, and there was a soft colour in the lobes of the
little ears, as the white leaves of daisies sometimes blush all round
their tips.

The nervous white hands held the little bag lightly, and twined it and
sewed it deftly, for Clare was clever with her fingers. Possibly they
looked even a little whiter than they were, by contrast with the dark
stuff of her dress, and illness had made them shrink at the lower part,
robbing them of their natural strength, though not of their grace. There
is a sort of refinement, not of taste, nor of talent, but of feeling and
thought, and it shows itself in the hands of those who have it, more
than in any feature of the face, in a sort of very true proportion
between the hand and its fingers, between each finger and its joints,
each joint and each nail; a something which says that such a hand could
not do anything ignoble, could not take meanly, nor strike cowardly, nor
press falsely; a quality of skin neither rough and coarse, nor over
smooth like satin, but cool and pleasant to the touch as fine silk that
is closely woven. The fingers of such hands are very straight and very
elastic, but not supple like young snakes, as some fingers are, and the
cushion of the hand is not over full nor heavy, nor yet shrunken and
undeveloped as in the wasted hands of old Asiatic races.

In outward appearance there was that sort of inherited likeness between
mother and daughter which is apt to strike strangers more than persons
of the same family. Mrs. Bowring had been beautiful in her youth--far
more beautiful than Clare--but her face had been weaker, in spite of the
regularity of the features and their faultless proportion. Life had given
them an acquired strength, but not of the lovely kind, and the complexion
was faded, and the hair had darkened, and the eyes had paled. Some faces
are beautified by suffering. Mrs. Bowring's face