Never to appear too eager with any of these people was, in the code of Mrs. Augustus, an essential point in their management. When this business had been performed, and she had settled herself as comfortably as might be in a not very luxurious arm-chair, Mrs. Brown felt for a pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses, adjusted them and looked Margaret over from head to foot. "Bless me, how handsome!" was her mental ejaculation: "my word for it, she's no good."
It was not wonderful that this coarse mind found it difficult to understand the strange anomaly, for Margaret was one of those rarely beautiful beings who seem only made for the tenderest handling. Her face might have been a poet's ideal, for the traces of suffering and conflict it only too plainly revealed had removed it far from the meaningless glory of mere form and coloring; and yet she was too young perhaps for these to have bereft her of any charm; they rather endowed her pale fair beauty with a certain refinement, an appealing pathos, which spoke powerfully to the imagination.
She possessed a form, too, whose every line was perfect, well developed, yet fragile—womanly, yet full of grace. And the deep crimson which Mrs. Brown's studied rudeness had called to her face heightened the effect of her beauty.
She sat before her visitor, her eyes cast down, her hands crossed in her lap, like a fair Greek slave in the barbarian's market-place, waiting for the decree of fate.
It was a relief when Mrs. Augustus Brown began to give her attention to the ponderous carriage-bag in her hand. Some of its fastenings, being the latest patents and the height of convenience, were difficult to manage.
"Your name," she said, hunting for a letter—"ah, here it is!—Mrs. Grey."
Margaret bowed, shivering slightly. That fatal emphasis. This was the way in which the inquisitions generally began.
Mrs. Augustus here coughed slightly, and looked over her gold-rimmed spectacles in a way intended to be severe. Alas! how we deceive ourselves! The look was only comic. "A married woman, I presume?"
Margaret bowed again.
Here Mrs. Brown consulted a set of ivory tablets: "With one little girl, I am told, and small income, anxious to make enough for her education. Is this correct?"