Lady Anne turned to Jean, and, laying an affectionate hand on her arm, drew her forward.
“Jean, let me introduce you to Mrs. Craig. My new acquisition, Judith, she went on contentedly. A daughter. I always told you I wanted one. Now I’ve borrowed someone else’s.”
Jean found herself shaking hands with a slender, distinctive-looking woman who moved with a slow, languorous grace that was almost snake-like in its peculiar suppleness.
She gave one the impression that she had no bones in her body, or that if she had, they had never hardened properly but still retained the pliability of cartilage.
She was somewhat sallow—the consequence, it transpired later, of long residence in India—with sullen, slate-coloured eyes, appearing almost purple in shadow, and a straight, thin-lipped mouth. Jean decided that she was not in the least pretty, though attractive in an odd, feline way, and that she must be about thirty-two. As a matter of fact, Judith Craig was forty, but no one would have guessed it—and she would certainly not have confided it.
Presently Nick, who had been personally supervising the feeding of his beloved dogs, joined the party, greeting Mrs. Craig with the easy informality of an old friend, and shortly afterwards Baines brought in the tea-things.
“And where is Burke?” enquired Blaise, of Mrs. Craig, as he handed her tea. “Didn’t he come back with you?”
“Geoffrey? Oh, no. He’s not coming down till the end of April. You know he detests Willow Ferry in the winter—‘beastly wet swamp,’ he calls it! He’s dividing his time between London and Leicestershire—London, while that long frost stopped all hunting.”
Mrs. Craig was evidently on a footing of long-established intimacy with the Staple household, and Jean, listening quietly to the interchange of news and of little personal happenings, regarded her with rather critical interest. She was not altogether sure that she liked her, but she was quite sure that, wherever her lot might be cast, Judith Craig would never occupy the position of a nonentity. She had considerable charm of manner, and there was a quite unexpected fascination about her smile—unexpected, because, when in repose, her thin lips lay folded together in a straight and somewhat forbidding line, whereas the moment they relaxed into a smile they assumed the most delightful curves, and two little lines, which should have been dimples but were not, cleft each cheek on either side of the mouth.
All at once Mrs. Craig turned to Jean as though she had made up her mind about something over which she had been hesitating.