Sir Julian was not insensible to the attraction of the last qualification, but he felt no security of endorsing Mark Easter's ready acclamation of a pretty face. His own taste was eclectic and the witless pink and white, the unsubtle contours that constitute the ideal feminine to the average Englishman, held no appeal for him.
He soon saw Miss Marchrose at the College, in the room adjoining Fuller's office that had been designed for the personal use of the Lady Superintendent.
She was talking to Mark Easter, standing beside him in the window, and the afternoon sun struck full upon her, revealing every little finely-drawn line of fatigue round her eyes and mouth.
Sir Julian's first sensation was of involuntary, surprised satisfaction at the slim, tall distinction of her whole bearing; the next, one of surprise at Mark Easter's verdict on her looks.
"Ten years ago, perhaps," he reflected. "Now she probably varies according to her state of health. But she'll never be called pretty."
Nevertheless, it seemed to him easy enough to trace a softer, rounder contour to the oval face, and to erase in imagination the shadows underlying black brows and hazel eyes, and the tiny, indelible marks that some past bitterness had left at either corner of the closely-curved mouth that was Miss Marchrose's most undeniably beautiful feature.
Her hair was brown, a soft dead-leaf colour that held no gleams of light and framed her square forehead loosely. Julian, looking at her, received the impression that her face held possibilities full of colour and animation, and yet was more often only faintly coloured, and shadowed with weariness.
"Charming at eighteen—and probably not admired, except by an occasional connoisseur—and now absolutely dependent for looks on the state of her vitality," he summarised her to himself.
But he ceased to entertain any doubts as to the vitality of Miss Marchrose when he heard her speak.
At the first sound of her voice he recognised that therein lay the charm which had made Mark Easter declare her to be good-looking. The soft beauty of a woman's speaking voice such as that of Miss Marchrose might well prove responsible for greater delusions.