‘Thank you,’ said the heiress as she again held out her little apron for Caroline to heap the blossoms into it. ‘Is this your daughter, Mr. Helstone?’ she asked.
‘My niece Caroline.’
Miss Keeldar shook hands with her, and then looked at her. Caroline also looked at her hostess.
Shirley Keeldar (she had no Christian name but Shirley: her parents, who had wished to have a son, finding that, after eight years of marriage, Providence had granted them only a daughter, bestowed on her the same masculine family cognomen they would have bestowed on a boy, if with a boy they had been blessed) —Shirley Keeldar was no ugly heiress. She was agreeable to the eye; her height and shape were not unlike Miss Helstone’s—perhaps in stature she might have the advantage by an inch or two. She was gracefully made, and her face, too, possessed a charm as well described by the word grace as any other. It was pale naturally, but intelligent, and of varied expression. She was not a blonde, like Caroline—clear and dark were the characteristics of her aspect as to colour; her face and brow were clear, her eyes of the darkest gray—no green lights in them: transparent, pure, neutral gray—and her hair of the darkest brown. Her features were distinguished; by which I do not mean that they were high, bony, and Roman, being indeed rather small and slightly marked than otherwise; but only that they were, to use a few French words, ‘fins, gracieux, spirituels’; mobile they were and speaking, but their changes were not to be understood, nor their language interpreted all at once. She examined Caroline seriously, inclining her head a little to one side, with a thoughtful air.
‘You see she is only a feeble chick,’ observed Mr. Helstone.
‘She looks young—younger than I. How old are you?’ she inquired, in a manner that would have been patronizing if it had not been extremely solemn and simple.
‘Eighteen years and six months.’
‘And I am twenty-one.’
She said no more; she had now placed her flowers on the table, and was busied in arranging them.
‘And St. Athanasius’s Creed?’ urged the Rector; ‘you believe it all, don’t you?’
‘I can’t remember it quite all. I will give you a nose-gay, Mr. Helstone, when I have given your niece one.’
She had selected a little bouquet of one brilliant and two or three delicate flowers, relieved by a spray of dark verdure; she tied it with silk from her workbox, and placed it on Caroline’s lap, and then she put her hands behind her, and stood bending slightly towards her guest, still regarding her, in the attitude and with something of the aspect of a grave but gallant little cavalier. This temporary expression of face was aided by the style in which she wore her hair, parted on one temple, and brushed in a glossy sweep above the forehead, whence it fell in curls that looked natural, so free were their wavy undulations.
‘Are you tired with your walk?’ she inquired.
‘No, not in the least; it is but a short distance—but a mile.’
‘You look pale. Is she always so pale?’ she asked, turning to the Rector.
‘She used to be as rosy as the reddest of your flowers.’
‘Why is she altered? What has made her pale? Has she been ill?’
‘She tells me she wants a change.’