"I say, you're making a most awful mess of me. Give me that towel." She stirred, smiled faintly, and tried to assume a businesslike briskness. He studied her as she leaned back in the window-embrasure. The resemblance? If he had not been prepared for it by some accident or trick of the light, he wondered if he would have noticed it at all.
In her quiet, casual, rather nervous way she had a beauty of her own. The face was pale and devoid of make-up; she had thin brows, curving a little upwards at the outer comers, over brown-black eyes of a curiously luminous quality. Her glance was direct, in contrast to Marcia's, and of a disturbing intensity; but she had the same heavy eyelids, the same small soft mouth and small neck.
What then? Another victim of the dreams in the cloudy absorption of this house? A background for the pompous vagaries of the brothers Bohun, as quiet Louise was for Lord Canifest? You had the whole matter in the tone of John Bohun's voice when he spoke abstractedly of Little Kate. He remembered what Willard had said.
"You must forgive me," she said, in her somewhat nervous fashion, "if I was upset, or said-silly things, or I'm always doing that. But I'm very fond of Louise. She has never had a chance. Her father. you know him, don't you?"
"I know his voice."
"Yes. Yes, that's what I meant," she nodded. "You understand. Louise liked you. She's a very different person, really, when she's among friends. I expect we all are. " She stared out of the window for a moment, and then turned back. "May I ask you something? Stella said — Stella's the maid who brought my tea up this morning — Stella said they were all talking about it downstairs, and that it was true. About Marcia. Is it true? Is it?"
She spoke breathlessly, and he nodded without replying.
"Stella said she was hurt, killed, out at the pavilion; and her head was all — all hurt, and John found her there. Is that true too?"
"I'm afraid so."
Again she turned away to the window, her shoulders rigid and her eyes closed. After a pause he said quietly: "Were you fond of her, then?"