"But, oh, my poor boy, I am not so sure of that," sighed the sister, secretly, as she left the room again with her partner.
As she passed back through the drawing-room where the hostess was receiving her guests, her attention was attracted by the figure of a girl who was standing with her back to them, talking to Arthur Miles.
Dick Arden turned suddenly to her.
"Who is that?" he asked breathlessly.
Only the back, straight and slender, was visible, its white silk bodice leaving bare a neck that would not have degraded the Venus de Medici. A small head, crowned with masses of rippled golden hair, was bent slightly to one side, showing a spray of lillies and a flash of diamonds. An enormous fan of snowy ostrich feathers formed a background to this faultless head.
Dick and Wyn were both artists. Simultaneously they moved forward, to catch a full view of the face belonging to a back which promised so rarely.
As they came towards her, the beauty turned in their direction, and a sigh of admiring wonder heaved Mr. Arden's breast as he gazed. It was Elsa.
Wyn knew her in the same instant that she recognized her astonishing beauty.
This was something far more wonderful than mere good looks. Regular features, a clear white skin, large eyes, good teeth, abundant hair—no doubt these are important factors in the structure of a woman, but Elsa possessed something far more subtle, more dangerous then any of these.
The trouble, the horror through which she had passed had left something behind—an indefinable but real influence—a dash of sadness—a shadow, a suggestiveness, which gave to mouth and eyes a pathos calculated to drive the soberest of men out of his senses. Had she been brought up like other girls, among companions of her own age—gone to juvenile parties, stayed at fashionable watering places, attended a select boarding-school, she would, of course, have grown up handsome; nature had amply provided for that, but her beauty would have been robbed of what was its chief charm. As it was, she was not only lovely, but unique; and her superb physical health added a crowning touch to her dissimilarity from the pretty, delicate, more or less jaded and over-educated London girls who surrounded her.