tiful nose. She made a grab at them with her free hand while I
turned confusedly away.

CHAPTER VII

I don't remember how soon it was I spoke to Geoffrey Dawling; his
sittings were irregular, but it was certainly the very next time he gave
me one.

"Has any rumour ever reached you of Miss Saunt's having anything the
matter with her eyes?" He stared with a candour that was a sufficient
answer to my question, backing it up with a shocked and mystified
"Never!" Then I asked him if he had observed in her any symptom, however
disguised, of embarrassed sight; on which, after a moment's thought, he
exclaimed "Disguised?" as if my use of that word had vaguely awakened a
train. "She's not a bit myopic," he said; "she doesn't blink or contract
her lids." I fully recognised this and I mentioned that she altogether
denied the impeachment; owing it to him moreover to explain the ground of
my inquiry, I gave him a sketch of the incident that had taken place
before me at the shop. He knew all about Lord Iffield; that nobleman had
figured freely in our conversation as his preferred, his injurious rival.
Poor Dawling's contention was that if there had been a definite
engagement between his lordship and the young lady, the sort of thing
that was announced in the Morning Post, renunciation and retirement would
be comparatively easy to him; but that having waited in vain for any such
assurance he was entitled to act as if the door were not really closed or
were at any rate not cruelly locked. He was naturally much struck with
my anecdote and still more with my interpretation of it.

"There _is_ something, there _is_ something--possibly something very
grave, certainly something that requires she should make use of
artificial aids. She won't admit it publicly, because with her idolatry
of her beauty, the feeling she is all made up of, she sees in such aids
nothing but the humiliation and the disfigurement. She has used them in
secret, but that is evidently not enough, for the affection she suffers
from, apparently some definite menace, has lately grown much worse. She
looked straight at me in the shop, which was violently lighted, without
seeing it was I. At the same distance, at Folkestone, where as you know
I first met her, where I heard this mystery hinted at and where she
indignantly denied the thing, she appeared easily enough to recognise
people. At present she couldn't really make out anything the shop-girl
sho