tremity of the upper lip grew a soft down), her
dark hair, her quiet voice and her gentle acquiescence (diversified by
occasional outbursts of sarcasm), appealed to them and won them; but
they accepted her as something of course, as something which went
without saying. They adored her, and did not know that they adored her.

May took off her hat, stuck the pins into it again, and threw it on the
bed, whose white and green counterpane hung down nearly to the floor on
either side. Then she lay back in the chair, and, pulling away the
blind, glanced through the window; the moon, rather dim behind the
furnace lights of Red Cow Ironworks, was rising over Moorthorne. May
dropped the blind with a wearied gesture, and turned within the room,
examining its contents as if she had not seen them before: the wardrobe,
the chest of drawers, which was also a dressing-table, the washstand,
the dwarf book-case with its store of Edna Lyalls, Elizabeth Gaskells,
Thackerays, Charlotte Yonges, Charlotte Brontes, a Thomas Hardy or so,
and some old school-books. She looked at the pictures, including a
sampler worked by a deceased aunt, at the loud-ticking Swiss clock on
the mantelpiece, at the higgledy-piggledy photographs there, at the new
Axminster carpet, the piece of linoleum in front of the washstand, and
the bad joining of the wallpaper to the left of the door. She missed
none of the details which she knew so well, with such long monotonous
intimacy, and sighed.

Then she got up from the chair, and, opening a small drawer in the chest
of drawers, put her hand familiarly to the back and drew forth a
photograph. She carried the photograph to the light of the candles on
the mantelpiece, and gazed at it attentively, puckering her brows. It
was a portrait of Lionel Woolley. Heaven knows by what subterfuge or
lucky accident she had obtained it, for Lionel certainly had not given
it to her. She loved Lionel. She had loved him for five years, with a
love silent, blind, intense, irrational, and too elemental to be
concealed. Everyone knew of May's passion. Many women admired her taste;
a few were shocked and puzzled by it. All the men of her acquaintance
either pitied or despised her for it. Her father said nothing. Her
brothers were less cautious, and summed up their opinion of Lionel in
the curt, scornful assertion that he showed a tendency to cheat at
tennis. But May would never hear ill of him; he was a god to her, and
she could not hide he