'You're describing a raving beauty, it seems to me.'
'Oh, no,' said the American innocently. 'Now if our friend Griggs, the novelist, were here, he'd find all the right words and things, but I can only tell you just what I saw.'
'You tell it uncommonly well!' Margaret's face expressed anything but pleasure. 'Is she tall?'
'It's hard to tell, in men's clothes. Three inches shorter than I am, maybe. I'm a middle-sized man, I suppose. I used to be five feet ten in my shoes. She may be five feet seven, not more.'
'But that's tall for a woman!'
'Is it?' Mr. Van Torp's tone expressed an innocent indifference.
'Yes. Has she nice hands?'
'I didn't notice her hands. Oh, yes, I remember!' he exclaimed, suddenly correcting himself. 'I did notice them. She held up that ruby to the light and I happened to look at her fingers. Small, well-shaped fingers, tapering nicely, but with a sort of firm look about them that you don't often see in a woman's hands. You've got it, too.'
'Have I?' Margaret looked down at her right hand. 'But, of course, hers are smaller than mine,' she said.
'Well, you see, Orientals almost all have very small [{150}] hands and feet—too small, I call them—little tiny feet like mice.'