"For those who like that swarthy kind of beauty. For myself, I do not: it always reminds me of negroes and Lascars."
Adelaide leaned forward, and made pretence to examine Leam's portrait with critical independence of judgment. She spoke as if this was the first time she had seen it, and her words the thought of the moment resulting.
"There is no negroid taint here," Edgar answered gravely. "It is the face of a sibyl, of a tragedian."
"Do you think so? It is fine in outline certainly, but too monotonous to please me, and too lugubrious; and the funny part of it is, there is nothing in her. She looks like a sibyl, but she is the most profoundly stupid person you can imagine."
"Not now, Addy: she has wakened up a good deal," again interposed Josephine with her love of justice and want of tact.
"But do you not see the mother in her, Josephine? I do, painfully; and the mother was such a horror! Leam is just like her. She will grow her exact counterpart"
"A bad model enough," said Edgar; "but this face is not bad. It has more in it than poor old Pepita's. How fat she was!"
"So will Leam be when she is as old," said Adelaide quietly. "And do you think these dark people ever look clean? I don't,"
"That is a drawback certainly," laughed Edgar, running through the remainder of the book.
But he turned back again to the page which held Leam and Adelaide side by side, and he spoke of the latter while he looked at the former. The face of Leam Dundas, mournful, passionate, concentrated as it was, had struck his imagination—struck it as none other had done since the time when he had met that grand and graceful woman wandering, lost in a fog, in St. James's Park, and had protected from possible annoyance till he had landed her in St. John's Wood. He was glad that Leam Dundas lived in North Aston, and that he should see her without trouble or overt action; and as he handed Adelaide into her carriage he noticed for the first time that her blue eyes were not quite even, that her flaxen hair had not quite enough color, and that her face, if pure and fair, was slightly insipid.