She smiled. It was like an April sunbeam shining after a shower. Springing from her knees, "Now for my drawing!" she exclaimed. She drew a chair to the table and went to work at once.
Some time after this, in going upstairs I met Mrs. Williams. She stepped aside to let me pass, but I paused on the landing. I had an idea that she was a much shrewder woman than her calm, pleasant, but not highly intelligent countenance would have suggested. I called her to the window on the landing and pointed to the front garden. Geraldine stood at the fountain making a cup of her hands to receive one of the silver threads of water which fell into the brimming basin.
"She seems as happy as a child here, does she not?" I said.
"She is like a child, Sir; innocent and gay as any little girl of five."
"And yet she is very womanly too; and it is this combination of gravity and simplicity that makes her so fascinating. Do you often talk with her, Mrs. Williams?"
"Sometimes, Sir."
"What do you talk about?"
"Oh, of different things."
"I dare say she puzzles your plain understanding?" I said, with a laugh, whose artificiality made it worse than my gravity. "She has a way of breaking off in her speech, of jumping from one idea to another, that must make her sometimes difficult for you to understand, eh?"
She glanced at me and quickly averted her eyes to the garden.