“Everybody loves her,” said Lady Blount, tenderly. The next time that John came to Southcliff he found a convalescent Unity. Dressmakers and other fabricators of feminine raiment had been at work, and she was clad in blouse and short serge skirt and her scanty, brown hair, instead of being screwed up in a diminutive bun at the back of her head, was combed and brushed and secured, after the manner of hair of young persons of sixteen, with bows of ribbon. She stood gawkily before him, confused in her own metamorphosis. At the orphanage she had worn the same uniform from early childhood. During her excursion into the world she had masqueraded as the grown woman. In the conventional attire of the English school-girl she did not recognize herself. Her coarse hands, scarcely refined by illness, hung awkwardly by her side. An appeal for mercy hovered at the back of her dull and patient eyes. Despite the trim dress and hair, she looked hopelessly unprepossessing, with her snub nose, wide mouth, weak chin, and bulgy and shiny forehead. Scragginess, too, had marked her for its own.
“Well, Unity,” said John, “so you 're up at last. Have you been in the garden?”
She made the bob taught at the orphanage.
“Yes, sir.”
“And you 're feeling well and strong?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And don't you think it's a very lovely place?”
“Yes, sir,” said Unity.
They were always shy in each other's company, question and answer being the form of their conversation. John, who could talk all day long to Stella, felt curiously constrained in the presence of this unfamiliar type of humanity; and Unity, regarding him at the same time as a god who had delivered her out of the House of Bondage and as a fellow-victim at the hands of the Unspeakable, scarcely found breath for the utterance of her monosyllables.
“Sit down and go on with your work,” said he. He had come upon her as she sat by the window of her room sewing some household linen. She obeyed meekly. He watched her busy, skilful fingers for some time.