A figure came to the head of the stairs.
“Father, do hurry up; Miss Minns is so impatient at having to wait, and I said I wouldn’t begin till you came, and the potatoes are black, black, black.”
Maradick looked up and saw a girl standing at the head of the stairs. In her hand she held a small silver lamp that flung a pale circle of yellow behind and around her; she held it a little above her head in order that she might see who it was that mounted the stairs.
He thought she was the most beautiful girl that he had ever seen; her face was that of a child, and there was still in it a faint look of wonderment and surprise, as though she had very recently broken from some other golden dream and discovered, with a cry, the world.
Her mouth was small, and curved delicately like the petals of a very young rose that turn and open at the first touch of the sun’s glow. Her eyes were so blue that there seemed no end at all to the depth, and one gazed into them as into a well on a night of stars; there were signs and visions in them of so many things that a man might gaze for a year of days and still find secrets hidden there. Her hair was dark gold and was piled high in a great crown, and not so tightly that a few curls did not escape and toss about her ears and over her eyes. She wore a gown of very pale blue that fell in a single piece from her shoulders to her feet; her arms to the elbow and her neck were bare, and her dress was bound at the waist by a broad piece of old gold embroidered cloth.
Her colouring was so perfect that it might have seemed insipid were it not for the character in her mouth and eyes and brow. She was smiling now, but in a moment her face could change, the mouth would grow stiff, her eyes would flash; there was character in every part of her.
She was tall and very straight, and her head was poised perfectly. There was dignity and pride there, but humour and tenderness in the eyes and mouth; above all, she was very, very young. That look of surprise, and a little perhaps of one on her guard against a world that she did not quite understand, showed that. There was no fear there, but something a little wild and undisciplined, as though she would fight to the very last for her perfect, unfettered liberty: this was Janet Morelli.
She had thought that her father was alone, but now she realised that some one was with him.
She stepped back and blushed.
“I beg your pardon. I didn’t know——”