His wandering gaze, travelling critically about the room he professed such warm admiration for, was abruptly arrested when it reached the doorway, where it remained transfixed, caught by a vision of such surprising beauty that for quite an appreciable while he remained staring and speechless, until suddenly recalled to the present by the sound of Krige’s foot moved with some impatience on the wooden floor.
“It’s perfect,” he finished his encomium with, and faced his hostess again with an enigmatic smile. “I thought that as soon as I saw it.”
The vision hereupon entered through the doorway.
“My daughter, Honor,” Mrs Krige said.
The vision confronted Matheson now, a tall graceful girl, with bright hair that suggested the sunlight, and eyes that were like brown pools, dark and shadowed, and splashed with a lighter shade as though the sunlight penetrated here too and sported in their brown depths. It was a lovely face; Matheson found it flawless. He was amazed at her beauty, at the soft transparency of the fair skin, and her quiet self-possession. She held out a cool, aloof hand.
“You know all about me,” she said, “but no one enlightens me... English?—of course.”
He was not sure whether it was his imagination, but he fancied he detected some hostility in her voice as she pronounced his nationality. Her tones rang odd and rather hard.
“Matheson by name, cosmopolitan by disposition,” he returned easily—“like yourself.”
“Oh! I’m Dutch,” she said quickly.
“Mr Matheson is a friend of Mr Holman,” her mother explained.