fying persons.
Clare was talking to the prosperous clergyman; he smiled continually,
and now and again laughed in reply to some remark, but it was always
something restrained and carefully guarded. He was obviously a man who
laid great store by exterior circumstances. That the sepulchre should
be filled with dead men's bones might cause him pain, but that it
should be unwhitened would be, to him, a thing far more terrible.

Clare turned round and addressed the room generally.

"Mr. Carrell has just been telling me of the shocking state of the
Cove," she said. "Insanitary isn't the word, apparently. Things have
gone too far, and the only wise measure seems to be to root the place
up completely. It is sad, of course--it was a pretty old place, but it
has had its day."

"I've just been telling your brother about it, Miss Trojan," said Mrs.
le Terry. "It's quite too terrible, and I'm sure it's very bad for all
of us to have anything quite so horrible so close to our houses.
There's no knowing what dreadful things we may not all of us be
catching at this very moment----"

She was interrupted by two new arrivals--Mrs. and Miss Bethel. They
were a curious contrast. The mother was the strangest old lady that
Harry had ever seen. She was tiny in stature, with snow-white hair and
cheeks that were obviously rouged; she wore a dress of curious shot
silk decorated with much lace, and her fingers were thick with jewels;
a large hat with great purple feathers waved above her head. It was a
fantastic and gaudy impression that she made, and there was something
rather pitiful in the contrast between her own obvious satisfaction
with her personal appearance and the bizarre, almost vulgar, effect of
such strangely contrasted colours. She came mincing into the room with
her head a little on one side, but in spite of, or perhaps because of,
her rather anxious smiles, it was obvious that she was not altogether
at her ease.

The girl who followed her was very different. Tall and very dark, she
was clothed quite simply in grey; her hair was wonderful, although it
was at present hidden to some extent by her hat, but its coal-black
darkness had something intent, almost luminous, about it, so that,
paradoxically, its very blackness held hidden lights and colours. But
it was her manner that Harry especially noticed. She followed her
mother with a strange upright carriage of the head and flash of the
eyes that were almost defiant