"This first meeting between host and guest was so odd, so incongruous, that it afforded me plenty of food for a fresh line of conjecture as I traced my way back to the picture-gallery, and from thence successfully to the drawing-room, which, as the door was ajar, I could not this time mistake.
"It was large and lofty and dimly lit by shaded lamps; through the rosy gloom I could at first only just make out a slender figure by the hearth; but as I advanced, this was resolved into a singularly graceful woman in clinging, fur-trimmed velvet gown, who, with one hand resting on the high mantelpiece, the other hanging listlessly by her side, stood gazing down at the crumbling wood fire as if in a dream.
"My friends are kind enough to say that I have a catlike tread; I know not how that may be, at any rate the carpet I was walking upon was thick enough to smother a heavier footfall; not until I was quite close to her did my hostess become aware of my presence. Then she started violently and looked over her shoulder at me with dilating eyes. Evidently a nervous creature, I saw the pulse in her throat, strained by her attitude, flutter like a terrified bird.
"The next instant she had stretched out her hand with sweet, English words of welcome, and the face, which I had been comparing in my mind to that of Guide's Cenci, became transformed by the arch and exquisite smile of a Greuse. For more than two years I had had no intercourse with any of my nationality. I could conceive the sound of his native tongue under such circumstances moving a man in a curious, unexpected fashion.
"I babbled some commonplace reply, after which there was silence while we stood opposite each other, she looking at me expectantly. At length, with a sigh checked by a smile and an overtone of sadness in a voice that yet tried to be sprightly:—
"'Am I then so changed, Mr. Marshfield?' she asked. And all at once I knew her: the girl whose nightingale throat had redeemed the desolation of the evenings at Rathdrum, whose sunny beauty had seemed (even to my celebrated, cold-blooded aestheticism) worthy to haunt a man's dreams. Yes, there was the subtle curve of waist, the warm line of throat, the dainty foot, the slender, tip-tilted fingers—witty fingers, as I had classified them—which I now shook like a true Briton, instead of availing myself of the privilege the country gave me, and kissing her slender wrist.
"But she was changed; and I told her so with unconventional frankness, studying her closely as I spoke.
"'I am afraid,' I said gravely, 'that this place does not agree with you.'
"She shrank from my scrutiny with a nervous movement and flushed to the roots of her red-brown hair. Then she answered coldly that I was wrong, that she was in excellent health, but that she could not expect, any more than other people, to preserve perennial youth (I rapidly calculated she might be two-and-twenty), though indeed, with a little forced laugh, it was scarcely flattering to hear one had altered out of all recognition. Then, without allowing me time to reply, she plunged into a general topic of conversation which, as I should have been obtuse indeed not to take the hint, I did my best to keep up.
"But while she talked of Vienna and Warsaw, of her distant neighbours and last year's visitors, it was evident that her mind was elsewhere; her eye wandered, she lost the thread of her discourse; answered me at random, and smiled her piteous smile incongruously.