Jane saw that it was a woman wearing a long white linen overall, and a curious linen head-dress, which she was undoing and pushing back as she walked. She pulled it off as she came up to them, saying, “It’s so hot in there I can hardly breathe, but too fascinating to leave. You’re early. Is this Miss Molloy?”
She put out her hand to Jane, and Jane, with her mind full of the portrait, looked open-eyed at its original.
Afterwards she tried to formulate her sensations, but, at the time, she received just that emotional shock which most people experienced when they first met Raymond Heritage.
Beautiful—but there are so many beautiful women. Charming? No, there was rather something that repelled, antagonised. In her presence Jane felt untidy, shabby, gauche.
Lady Heritage unbuttoned her overall and slipped it off. She wore a plain white knitted skirt and jersey. Her fingers were bare even of the wedding ring which Jane looked for and missed. Her black hair was a little ruffled, and above the temples, where Amory had painted diamond wings, there were streaks of grey.
Bewilderment came down on Jane like a thick mist, which clung about her during the brief interchange of sentences which followed, and went with her to her room.
It was a queer room with a rounded wall set with three windows and to right and left irregular of line, with a jutting corner here and a blunted angle there. It faced west, for the sun shone level in her eyes.
Crossing to the window, as most people do when they come into a strange room, she looked out and caught her breath with amazement.
The sea—why, it seemed to lie just beneath the windows!
They had driven up from the landward side, and this was her first hint that the sea was so near.