penetrating regard of the light-blue eyes
was softened by a heavy growth of lash. The eyebrows were low and thick,
the upper lip was sensitive, quivering sometimes as she talked, but the
lower was firm and full. It was the brow, the profile, the strength of
character expressed, the general seriousness of the fine face and head,
that made her look like a reversion to the type that gave birth to a
nation. But Miss Thangue had seen too much of the world to judge any one
by his inherited shell. She had observed many Americans with fine heads
and bulging brows concealing practically nothing, insignificant German
heads whose intellects had terrified her, the romantic Spanish eyes of
the most unromantic people in Europe, English pride and an icy mask of
breeding guarding from the casual eye the most lawless and ribald
instincts. Therefore had she no intention of taking this new specimen on
trust, much as she liked her, and she speculated upon her possibilities
in the friendly silence that had fallen between them. Life is composed
of individuals and their choruses, and Flora, humorously admitting the
fact, was far more interested in others than in herself.

Only in the dense silky masses of her black hair and the almost stolid
absence of gesture did the American betray her Spanish ancestry; but how
much of the Spaniard, subtle, patient, vengeful, treacherous, mighty in
passive resistance and cunning, lay behind those deep fearless blue eyes
of her New England ancestors? Or was she not Spanish at all, but merely
a higher type of American--or wholly herself? Would Jack, susceptible
and passionate, a worshipper of beauty down among the roots of his
abnormal cleverness and egoism, fall in love with her? And what then?
The girl, with her strong stern profile against the shadows, her low
brooding brows, might wield a power far more dangerous than that of the
average fascinating woman, if her will marshalled the rest of her
faculties and drove them in a straight line; although the luminous skin
as polished as ivory, the low full curves and slow graceful movements of
her figure added a potency that Flora, always an amused observer of men,
would have been the last to ignore. Victoria, high-bred, fastidious,
mocking, yet unmistakably passionate and possibly insurgent, was of
that mint of woman about whom men had gone mad since the world began.
But this girl, who might be as cold as the moon, or not, looked, in any
case, capable of claspin