should a set of people have been put in motion, on
such a scale and with such an air of being equipped
for a profitable journey, only to break down without
an accident, to stretch themselves in the wayside
dust without a reason? The answer to these ques
tions was not in Chirk Street, but the questions them
selves bristled there, and the girl's repeated pause
before the mirror and the chimney-place might
have represented her nearest approach to an escape
from them. Was it not in fact the partial escape
from this " worst " in which she was steeped to be
able to make herself out again as agreeable to see?
She stared into the tarnished glass too hard indeed
to be staring at her beauty alone. She readjusted
the poise of her black, closely-feathered hat; re
touched, beneath it, the thick fall of her dusky hair;
kept her eyes, aslant, no less on her beautiful averted
than on her beautiful presented oval. She was
dressed altogether in black, which gave an even
tone, by contrast, to her clear face and made her
hair more harmoniously dark. Outside, on the bal
cony, her eyes showed as blue; within, at the mir
ror, they showed almost as black. She was hand
some, but the degree of it was not sustained by
items and aids; a circumstance moreover playing
its part at almost any time in the impression she
produced. The impression was one that remained,
but as regards the sources of it no sum in addition
would have made up the total. She had stature
without height, grace without motion, presence

[[5]]

p004 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p005w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p006

v?