She was slight; her hair was of a light brown, her eyes of a distinct orange color. Her face sloped delicately from the forehead, which was low enough to be beautiful, and high enough to suggest nobility of thought, down to the lovely line of chin. Her throat was slender and very white, rising from a turned-down Puritan collar. A Puritan cloak of dust-colored linen, with strappings of orange, fell away under the collar in soft and cool lines. Her brown veil had at its edge a line of orange color also. The brown was a shade lighter than her hair; the orange a shade darker than her eyes. The veil carried with it I cannot say what manner of ethereal graciousness, and fell into a wave or floating line of loveliness as she turned her head. Once, as we dipped into a shaded hollow and across a running stream, a little breeze of coolness came in at the windows. The veil, lifted by it, floated and clung like a living thing to her throat and lips, until her delicate hand put it away gently.
I watched her, very fascinated. She was a creature of another world. That she and the horse-radish woman could live on the same planet spoke volumes for the infinite scale of life.
At first these two new passengers spoke hardly at all. Once the man bent his massive figure to get a better look at the landscape from the window opposite him, and called the attention of his companion to some point in it.
'There! As I recollect it, the property is not unlike that, Louise. It rolls that way, I mean; and Felton’s line comes into it just as that snake fence comes across there. It is on the other side that the vein of coal is said to begin.'
Though she gave a courteous hearing, I had the impression that she was not really interested.
She watched the country with a kind of well-bred inattentive glance. For myself I could not take my eyes off her. I watched her with that hunger for beauty which is native to the heart of a child. Above all I watched her eyes. The strange, unusual color of them was in itself a kind of romance. She gave one the impression of being a woman unique; something rare and choice, not to be found again or elsewhere.
Once she turned her head and met my full gaze. I was embarrassed, but I need not have been. She set the matter right by addressing me with a gentle courtesy.
'Do you live out here?'
I shook my head. I meant to reply more fully in a moment when I had recovered myself; but the man spoke.
'Never heard of Thomas Felton, I suppose, did you? Used to live once in Owen County not far from here.'